How to Protect Against Online Identity Theft

Online identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States, and has ranked as one of the top consumer concerns for the past several years. There are several ways thieves can steal your personal information online, using spyware or malware, phishing or hacking into your computer or a corporate computer that holds your personal financial information or credit card numbers.

There are several steps you can take to protect yourself from identity theft.

1. Make sure you have anti-virus software installed on your computer and the software is up to date. This will help prevent your information from being stolen through spyware or malware that hight have been installed on your pc without your knowledge.

2. Be very careful about downloading free software, movies or music. Sometimes spyware or malware is hidden in these files and can be installed without your knowledge.  

3. If you receive an "urgent" e-mail which appears to originate from a financial institution, government agency, or other well-known/reputable entity asking you to update your account information DO NOT click on any links in the email. The email might be a phishing scam and the link provided in the email isn't to the actual reputable financial institution's website but to a fraudster's website. Once you are on the fake website you might be asked to provide your account numbers, passwords, social security number or any other personal information. When you provide the information the person committing the fraud can begin to access your accounts and assume your identity to apply for more credit.

If you suspect you are about to be a victim of fraud the first thing to do is put an initial fraud alert on your credit file, this alert will stay in place for 90 days and it will require creditors to verify your identity before issuing credit in your name.

If you have already been a victim of fraud fill out an Identity Complaint Form with the FTC and put an extended fraud alert on your credit file which requires all creditors to actually speak with you before issuing credit. The extended fraud alert stays on your file for 7 years.

Learn more about phishing scams by playing this informative game.