ID Theft

A lot of people wonder how ID theft happens, as most people are rather cautious about giving out their personal information. However, these thieves have many ways of stealing your information, and knowing how they do it can help protect you. Some methods are simple to avoid, while others are rather ingenious or technological-based. There are also many other ways, but these are the most common.

Stealing

Perhaps the most basic of all ID theft is just stealing the information from you. By simply taking your wallet, purse or mail, someone can gain access to a wide range of your personal information. If they really want your information, they may even bribe people you work with to get the information for them.

This can be difficult to stop. If your wallet is stolen, then there is no easy way of changing your social security numbers, nor can you monitor your mailbox all day to ensure no one is ever taking letters from it. To stop this, just make sure that you monitor credit card statements and your credit score to ensure nothing is happening without your consent.

Dumpster Diving

Unless you shred or black out all your personal information on letters, you may be unwittingly subject yourself to ID theft by giving away personal information that is probably more valuable than you recognize. Some people are willing to go through dumpsters, trashcans and landfills to find this information. However, by shredding documents, you can ensure that any letters found are illegible and useless to these people.

Changing Address

These people may complete a change of address form to divert any billing statements from your house to their destination. This is much easier than going up to your mailbox and stealing letters, and since they tend to use anonymous addresses, they will usually not be caught doing this.

You can counter this by periodically calling the post office and financial institutions and asking them to verify your home address. Doing this about once a month should be more than enough.

Phishing

When the bank emails you, the email should not ask for any personal information. However, you have probably seen a few emails that do ask for social security numbers or your birthday. This is because someone sent you a phishing email.

In this ID theft scheme, someone designs an email that uses the same graphics that the bank uses. They may also copy the bank’s website, so you feel more comfortable giving your information.

First, never give personal information over email. Second, call the bank and ask them about the email. Most of the time, this type of email will be fake. Usually these emails go into your spam filter, but some look so official that they can easily fool these filters into believing that they are real emails.

Skimming

This type of ID theft is very hard to detect, and you may not know about it even when you are giving over your information. How often do you use your debit or credit card? Have you ever thought about how safe the processing terminal is?

Some hackers are able to get into the terminal, or they use a special terminal, that takes your information. When the card is being processed, the terminal will keep a record of your number, name and other information needed to verify and use the card. Then, the person takes the information at their leisure.

Like with stealing, make sure you keep checking your credit card statements and score to ensure nothing happens to you.

Pretexting

This is similar to phishing, but often has more of a human touch. Instead of someone emailing you to get personal information, they will call you. The pretense is that the person is calling as a representative of a business, or he or she is working with a research institution.

They will start by asking normal answers so they get basic information like your name and birthday. They will then start asking for personal information, like your social security number. Since people tend to trust the phone more than email, this often works.

To avoid this, never give out your information unless you first called the business and know you can trust the company.

Conclusion

ID theft is a prevalent problem, and while there are many sneaky ways of stealing this information, you can often avoid it by just being smart. Ensure you never openly share this information, and take the tips above, and you should never have to face this awful problem.