It’s impossible to protect yourself completely from identity theft, but you can cut your risks with some simple precautions.

Keep a Secure Mindset

Don’t give out your personal information. If someone calls you asking for your social security number or a credit card number, ask for a number to call them back. That’s assuming they have a valid need for the information. If you’re ordering something by telephone, don’t let the other person repeat your credit card number – say it twice instead. You don’t know who’s standing behind them taking notes.

Ask questions. If someone asks for sensitive information, ask them why they need it. Find out how will it be used, and what happens to it when they don’t need it anymore. All businesses are supposed to have an information privacy policy they can give out. Ask for a copy.

Your Mai

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If you watch the news at all, you know that the risks of identity theft are everywhere. Regular reports of identities being stolen en masse are not uncommon. And that’s to say nothing of the number of times each day that individual identities are stolen.

On any given day you can hear stories about government agencies that lose a laptop which contains hundreds of thousands of personal records or a corporate data breach where criminals hack into a database and steal all of the personal records stored there. Colleges fall victim. Even the medical facilities that so many of us trust without a second thought are at risk.

Protecting Your Identity

The number of identity scams that users face is astounding. And the most frightening part is that many of those scams and thefts aren’t even reported until months after they happen. By then, victims are already suffering the losses that come with identity theft.

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Identity theft has become a common crime, although statistics show occurrences are decreasing from a high of 10.1 million victims in the year 2003 to 8.4 million in 2007, it still costs consumers and affected organizations nearly $50 billion per year (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2007). And it’s not merely an inconvenience or a detriment to a victim’s credit rating, identity theft is classified as a federal crime.

According to the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998, it is a federal crime if someone “knowingly transfers or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of the Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law.”

According to the Federal Trade Commission, the most common forms of identity theft include credit card fraud, bank fraud, communications services fraud (such as opening a cell phone account), and obtaining fraudulent loans used to purchase goods or services. No

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When we consider how identity theft happens, the various scams and other common methods of identity theft tend to fall into one of two categories. Low-tech methods such as dumpster diving and telephone scams are easier to fight against because they take advantage of a victim’s personal habits. However when considering high-tech methods of identity theft, there’s not much that you can do, because your personal information is stolen from somebody that you gave it to for a business purpose (like buying a house or getting an insurance quote.)

Low-Tech Methods

Stolen Wallet/Purse or other personal theft. The earliest cases of identity theft were probably related to personal information obtained by a pickpocket or burglar. The classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, is resolved through an assumed identity, and the concept probably goes further back than that.

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The risks for identity theft are everywhere you turn. Your mail, your computer, your credit cards, even your trash; all present opportunities for criminals to gain access to your personal information. To prevent identity theft, you must constantly be aware of the ways that criminals will use to gain access to your personal, identifying information.

Computer Scams

One place that identity thieves often focus their attention is on your computer. Web sites and emails can put you at risk for identity theft. Learn how to recognize the most common computer-based scams.

Real World Scams

Most people associate identity theft with computer crimes, but in truth more than half of identity theft happens in real world situations.

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Point of Threat: Credit Cards

Identity theft and credit card fraud are not the same crime, though the two are often lumped together as one. Identity theft is much more far-reaching than credit card fraud. When a criminal steals you identity, they may have financial motivation, but you’ll suffer more than fraudulent charges on your credit cards.

Identity thieves may change account information, create new accounts, use your identity to commit crimes, and even use your identity to establish a new life. Credit card fraud, on the other hand, is limited to charges on stolen credit card numbers. A criminal gains access to your account number and then uses it to purchase products online or in person and then resells those goods to get the cash.

So, if credit card fraud is not identity theft, why address it? The simple answer is because credit card fraud can be an element of identity theft.

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