uccess With Money
uccess With Money
Your Personal Guide to Achieving Success With Your Money and Your Life
An important part of our financial lives, unfortunately, must involve protecting ourselves from loss. Most people are aware of the basic forms of protection such as insurance and the like, but one area most people never develop much awareness of relates to one of the major crimes in America today, identity theft.
Most people have heard about some of the primary ways to protect themselves from identity thieves such as not giving out their Social Security number, shredding bank and legal papers that include information like bank account numbers, and not giving out personal information on the phone unless you are sure who you are talking to (usually this means you placed the call, they didn't call you).
There is a lot more we can do, however. Are you really as careful with receipts as you should be? Some receipts have our credit/debit card numbers printed out in full. If you need to keep receipts file them in a safe place; if you don't need to keep a receipt, shred it.
In spite of people's fears of doing business online, online billing and financial statements can be safer than using the mail. More than 10% of identify theft is achieved through stealing mail. Anyone who handles your physical mail has an opportunity to steal your information.
When disposing of a computer either use a special program that wipes all data or remove and destroy the hard drive. Remember that deleting files on your hard drive does not remove anything, it just marks a file as unwanted.
Protecting yourself from identity theft is an important skill and requires more effort than most people suppose. The above tips are just calling attention to the scope of the problem. The bad guys keep trying new scams. Fortunately, there are many places where you can learn more about how to do it effectively.
North Star Mutual Insurance Company, with whom I just happen to have an insurance policy, has a remarkable site at http://www.northstar-idtheft.com/home.htm. If offers some of the best help I have seen in understanding and developing the skills you need to avoid what has proven to be a horrific experience for thousands of people every year.
After doing what you can to prevent identity thieves from getting your financial information, you can take a further step to prevent them from using it. For a very small charge, only $5.00 for each of the three credit bureaus in Minnesota where I live, you can put a freeze (or block) on your credit report. That way if anyone tries to use your identity to get credit information they will be blocked from doing so.
Even back in 2005 the FTC was contacted by over 685,000 people reporting over $680 million in losses. Don't join their numbers by neglecting to develop your skill in avoiding and stopping identity thieves.
Check out the site I mentioned or read elsewhere about it. Then put into practice those steps that will effectively protect your personal financial data.
