Identity theft protection is serious business. When you’re the victim of identity theft, your life can be turned upside down. Depending on the circumstances, you can face financial and even legal problems in the future because of identity theft.
Fortunately, there are some things you can do to help get identity theft protection. The first thing you need to do is understand exactly how identity theft occurs, and what the most common identity theft traps look like.
Here are some of the most common identity theft techniques:
- Phishing. This occurs when you get an email that claims to be from a financial institution or other business. They give you a link that asks for your username and password. The email is actually from an identity thief who wants to get access to an online account of yourse (such as PayPal or eBay).
- Smishing. This is like phishing, but it’s with a text message instead of an email. They are most effective with iPhones and other smartphones.
- Vishing. This is voice phishing. Someone calls you and asks you for personally identifying information. They may claim to be from your financial institution, or they may claim that you’ve won a contest or a prize of some sort.
- Spoofing. Sometimes, hackers will break in and drive traffic from a legitimate web site to a fake website. So, you’ll try to log into Facebook, but your computer will take you to the hacker’s site where they will steal your login information. From there, they’ll have access to plenty of personal information they can use to steal your identity.
- Spyware. Some types of software can infect your computer without you even knowing it. You might install a game, and a hacker somewhere is recording your keystrokes including things like credit card numbers or bank account logins.
- Digging through the trash. Believe it or not, it does happen. Make sure to shred any important documents before tossing them out, and fully destroy your old credit cards when it’s time to dispose of them.
