Chances are you or someone you know have experienced some form of identity theft. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year. The crime takes many forms. Identity thieves may rent an apartment, obtain a credit card, or establish a telephone account in your name. You may not find out about the theft until you review your credit report or a credit card statement and notice charges you didn’t make-or worse yet, until you’re contacted by a debt collector. This article will give you some easy steps you can take right now to help prevent your financial identity from being stolen.
Step #1: Carefully review all your monthly bills. The thief might start small, charging a low value item to your credit card just to see if it will get through. If you identify the invalid charge immediately, and notify your financial institution, further illegal charges will be blocked. But give the thief a month or two, and the charges may run into the thousands, and will be much more difficult to get erased.
Step #2: Shred your personal identifying information. Every time the mail arrives, it probably brings some bill […]
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You may think your identity is perfectly safe and that identity and credit card theft could only happen to someone else, but take a few minutes to answer this Identity Theft Quiz, and see how safe your money and identity really is. Each answer is worth between 1 and 5 points, which you can tabulate at the end of the quiz to see how well your identity is truly protected:
1) What is your primary method of disposal for personal finance information?
A) For the most part, I tear the information up, and then dispose of it.
B) I tear some of the information and shred some of it before I dispose of it.
C) I use a cross-cut shredder to destroy my documents every time, before disposing of them.
2) What method do you use for disposal of unsolicited, pre-approved credit card direct mailing information?
A) I simply dispose of them in the garbage can.
B) I always destroy them in some fashion - either I tear them up, or I shred them.
C) I always use a cross-cut paper shredder before I dispose of them.
3) What method do you use to discard other personal information like bank statements, pay stubs, credit card bills, cancelled checks or […]
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With the ever-present threat of identity theft mounting each year, credit card companies are in a battle to provide the most up-to-date security features for their cards. The reason for this is that credit card fraud remains the most common form of identity theft despite the large numbers of people who make secure purchases every day.
As a result, many card companies have to develop the means to deter those who would seek to exploit the weaknesses in the current credit card system. One of the consequences of this research is the development of credit card security features. Nearly all of the major credit card companies employ one or more security features in the cards that they distribute and some offer option add-on security services to provide an extra level of protection.
The goal of any credit card security feature is to provide viable safeguards to protect your personal information and mitigate the damages to personal credit if the card falls into a criminal’s hands. Most of these services are offered free of additional charges by the card companies while the aforementioned add-on features may end up costing the cardholder a small fee for implementation. At the present, there are […]
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