One of the ways you can stop them is by regularly checking your credit report — for free! Doing so can alert you to unusual activity that would otherwise go unnoticed and blossom into a nasty outcome.

To ensure your credit is not being “borrowed” by someone else, check out these two services and run a free credit report of your own. FreeCreditReport.com and AnnualCreditReport.com.

When you order your free credit report on FreeCreditReport, you’ll also be entered in a 30-day trial membership where your credit will be monitored regularly should you decide to keep it going. This may be a good idea for people who forget to or don’t have time to check their report themselves.

[tags]credit report,free,annual,identity theft[/tags]

You’re probably already aware of the guidelines some sites make by requiring you to enter a minimum number of characters. They may even require you to combine numbers and letters. This is good because they’re trying to make you think about creating a password that’s hard for others to guess instead of using “Fluffy”, the family pet.

A pet’s name, your birth date, and the like are too common for passwords, yet the ease in remembering them is very tempting. Fight the temptation!

A password doesn’t have to be a jumble of hard-to-remember characters, although, that would make it more secure. But you could make them hard-to-guess. Coming up with a word and putting numbers on either end of it, for example, would help reduce your risk to online intrusion.

Regardless of whether you make a password hard-to-remember or hard-to-guess, you’d be doing yourself a favor by recording them securely.

You could enter them in a Microsoft Excel file and password protect that, but cracking into anything with the word “Microsoft” involved is quite an attraction for hackers. Probably not your safest choice.

You’re better off using a software package specifically designed for keeping your passwords safe. AnyPassword is just such a download and it’s free! The only password you need to remember is the one to get into its file. It even creates passwords for you based on your specifications and allows you to add other important information as notes, such as the email address you used to create the account.

There are many, many other software offerings that do this same thing. Some are free, others have a cost. Some are even online, and while that may be a big attraction for some, I just haven’t been able to allow myself to join that crowd yet. The thought of having all my account information — numbers, passwords, emails, and so on — all in one place online is a bit unnerving for me.

It has been estimated that over 15 million people were victims of identify theft in 2006 in the U.S. Once hackers find a way in to your computer, particularly if you use one password everywhere, then it’s no longer one account they can abuse — it’s the online auction site, bank accounts, credit card sites. The list goes on and on.

Bottom line: using unique passwords for each online account is a stronger defense and a small price to pay when you consider the trouble you’ll be saving yourself down the road.

[tags]identity theft,internet fraud,online safety,internet safety[/tags]

He agreed to meet this person at a hotel room, only to find two other people already there. Long story short, he woke up the next morning not only to find $20 missing from his wallet, but was even more surprised to receive calls from credit card companies asking him to verify the thousands of dollars that were charged on his card.

Score one for the credit card companies to monitor and check with him. The damage was done by that time, but at least it was brought to this guy’s attention from the start.

The criminals were able to find out so much about him in so little time with just the information they found in his wallet. This should serve as a reminder to pay attention to exactly what’s in your wallet and decide if it should really be in there.

Of course, the other offense here, in my mind at least, is that he met someone online and made the poor decision of meeting in a private rather than public place. I’m not saying that nothing good can come of meeting someone online, but for crying out loud, meeting that person in a room is just plain stupid!

I know of a couple who met online first and who are now married. But they at least brought someone along with them the first time they met in public just to be safe.

One woman, a victim of this sort of spyware, was lucky. She managed to stop at least one account from going too far. But it wasn’t until she received an email informing her that her password had changed on one of her business accounts that she knew something was up. Someone had changed her password on eBay. She did a search for her user ID on the site and discovered that someone had been bidding on items in her name — and her money.

While she managed to warn merchants on the site that were selling items to this doppelganger, she couldn’t get to one in time: a Playstation was already on it’s way to Indonesia.

Things that can cause your computer to be infected with spyware are other programs that you know you’re downloading, but carry a hidden payload. Maybe it’s that link you clicked on in an email or instant message, or maybe even on a site, that invited in the malicious code. In fact, spyware has become so sophisticated that it can infect your computer just by visiting a Web site.

So what can you do to prevent this type of activity from happening to you and your family? Here are a few suggestions:

• Get an antivirus package installed on your computer and keep it updated with the latest virus definitions.
• Internet Explorer is a favor target among hackers. Try using another browser. Opera and Firefox are very popular and have different ways of battling such infections.
• Use a spyware detection program to identify and remove spyware. Do this as regularly as you would running your antivirus software.
• Install a firewall on your computer. This helps monitor traffic coming and going across your computer’s ports. Sunbelt Sofware has Kerio Personal Firewall that’s very good, in my opinion.
• Even if you choose not to employ the ideas above, you can bump up your security settings in your browser.

The last section of the US to join the service are the eastern states, currently scheduled for September 1, 2005.

Checking your credit report regularly will alert you to unauthorized purchases and anomalies that need your attention. Should your identity or credit card(s) be stolen, you’ll be in a much better position to stop unauthorized purchases made by the criminal a lot sooner, saving you a lot of work, frustration, and money.

Visit Annual Credit Report now.

I’ve talked about protecting your identity from being stolen. Now I’d like to focus your attention on your teen’s identity. After all, they’re unique in that if they have credit records at all, you’ll most likely find a clean report. And besides, what teen do you know who checks their credit reports?

To the criminal, this is a dream come true because it means they can get away with a lot more for a longer period of time before anything wrong has been discovered.

Identity theft is still relatively new. I say this half in jest, but the number of teens who steal identities for fun and profit is probably larger than the number who actually give it a second thought. Again, just an idea; no statistics to back it up.

So what can you do to help them?

• Explain to them that ID theft is real.
• Their personal information is their personal information. They need to exercise extra care when deciding when it is appropriate to give someone their Social Security number, for instance. An employer needs it; the grocery clerk they encounter most likely doesn’t.
• Carrying their Social Security card with them is a bad idea. It’s better to memorize it. It’s also a good idea to remember their driver’s license number.
• If they have a checking account, emphasize the importance of keeping the checks secure.
• Roommates are often the person they have to worry about the most. Hide those credit cards, checks, bank statements, etc.
• You should be checking their credit report regularly just like you should be checking yours. (You are checking yours, right?) In fact, you can get them into the habit of checking their report.

You teach them to not talk to strangers, to be careful when driving, and so forth. Be sure to add to that list the importance of keeping their personal information protected.

Here’s the scam. Let’s say you just got married. You get an official looking envelope in the mail; it looks like it’s from the government. Inside are papers stating that due to your recent marriage you must fill out the forms to record your name change. It asks for everything: full name, address, phone number, credit cards, social security, etc. There could also be a fee included.

Don’t fall for it! According to a county clerk in New Castle, there is no “federal or state government or law” that requires you to record your name change after getting married. Just throw the package away.

What a treasure trove this must be when the criminal sends this package and actually gets one back all filled out. Everything he’s asked for has been handed to him, so it’s off to do a little shopping on your behalf.

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It all started when the victim’s wallet was stolen at the grocery checkout stand (from the checker!). Even the security cameras caught the person who took it. Shortly thereafter, the victim started receiving bills for purchases that he did not make. He goes on to say how difficult it was to get companies to cooperate with him to get the information he needed to make a case. The detective was practically useless. “But you’re not the victim,” he would say to this guy. “You don’t have to pay for any of it.” What ignorance. While that may be the case, it still does not mean that people are dramatically, emotionally, and physically changed by becoming a victim to identity theft.

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VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, uses the same network as regular Web traffic. Organizations providing this service have cropped up over recent years. Some of these organizations are partly to blame because they allow scam artists to disguise themselves as someone else when making a call.

This “caller ID spoofing” is the latest tool in what has historically been used in e-mail phishing scams. I can just imagine what a call like this might sound like:

“Hello Mr. Jones. I’m with ACME Bank. Due to a server crash, I’m calling our customers to verify their logon information with our database backup system. Would you mind giving me your logon information so that I can ensure things are in order?“

Yikes!

This technique of falsifying one’s identity is often used by debt collectors.

Looking at this from another perspective — yours — these scammers could make it look as though they’re calling from your home to places like your bank or Western Union, a company that requires a call be made from your household before money can be transferred. Despite their focused efforts on security, Western Union and organizations like them, have no way to counter such methods, at least not yet.

So my advice to you, whether or not you use VoIP, is don’t give out personal information over the phone unless you have confirmed that you have the proper number to the organization in question and make the call yourself. Same goes for e-mails. It’s way too easy these days to appear like someone else, so be cautious.

It seems no matter how often I read these sorts of things, there’s always something that the criminals do that amazes me.Stealing Maureen’s social security number was only the first step in a long line of criminal acts. They drained their bank account, purchased two cars, and set fire to one of them so they could claim the auto insurance. The criminals opened 30 (yes, 30!) bank accounts in Maureen and Ray’s name, as well as changed their address six times.

Remember, one of the ways these criminals can get away with their actions for so long is because they can divert all incoming mail to another address, so the true identity holders aren’t aware of what’s going on until their accounts have been frozen or their credit check comes back with a bad score.

The article mentions something I don’t agree with, however. According to my research and an earlier post, AnnualCreditReport.com will be rolling out free annual credit reports to everyone in the US on a time-release schedule. The article mentions everyone can do it now, but fail to say how or where to go to get one. I can only assume they’re speaking about ACR.

Until next time, surf safely!

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