What You Need To Know About Identity Theft

You’ve probably heard of the term identity theft several times in the news, but there are a lot of misconceptions about what identity theft really is and what the best protection measures are. While some identity thieves try to get your payments cards and steal them even before you realize, others use other less detailed information about you in order to gain access to your full identity.

No one is completely safe from identity theft, but with some knowledge about this practice, you can always stay a step ahead of them. Here’s what you need to know about identity theft.

What You Need To Know About Identity Theft

 

1. Your credit card number is not needed to steal your identity.

Contrary to popular beliefs, hackers don’t really need your credit card information in order to steal your identity. As crafty as they are, all they need is one piece of information about you to gain access to the rest.

Once they have that piece of information, they can easily solve the puzzle to the rest of your information. It’s very important you protect vital documents such as your passport, birth certificates, unused credit cards, etc, in a safe place at home.

 

2. Pay attention when checking out

If a cashier or a salesperson spends more time than usual with your card, they may be skimming your card to harvest some information or taking a photo of it with a cellphone. Be vigilant and make sure your card is not used with any device asides the payment terminal.

Check your card after payment also to make sure it’s yours and not a similar one swapped with yours.

 

3. Public Wi-Fi Access Points can be a threat

Hotspots are very convenient. However, they are a huge threat as they can expose you to identity thieves. Try as much as you can to avoid public hotspots. If you still want to use a hotspot for obvious reasons, make sure you’re using a secured VPN.

Hackers are always hooked up to public networks, sniffing for information such as your passwords, usernames, payment card numbers and other relevant data you have.

 

4. Identity theft is hard to detect

New account fraud is increasingly becoming difficult to detect unless you’re constantly observing your credit report or have a credit monitoring system set up. The longer a credit card fraud goes unnoticed, the harder it is for the process to get resolved.

It is said 55{76ac33845123b25982ffda0eb6f606179ce899e677f3c86d035d7b9fa6b6d307} of fraud activities are identified by third parties whereas 45{76ac33845123b25982ffda0eb6f606179ce899e677f3c86d035d7b9fa6b6d307} are detected by consumers.

 

5. Protect yourself

There’s no way to fully avoid identity theft, but there are numerous ways to fight before it happens. Here are a few:

• File a 90-day fraud alert if you suspect your identity has been compromised.
• Close any accounts you suspect have been tampered with or opened fraudulently
• Dispute any unauthorized transactions as fast as you can
• Make your passwords on your various online accounts very tough to crack. Don’t use the same password for all your accounts.

 

What You Need To Know About Identity Theft, what did we leave out, feel free to leave a comment below!