About Identity Theft

If you’re on Facebook, love them or hate them, you’ve likely heard of games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and Zoo World. If not, your kids have heard of them. These mini versions of simulators are all applications that are used by a whole lot of people – think tens of millions. If you use these applications, you may have found that there is something a little shady going on. According to blogger Deb Manzella, if you’ve tried to log in recently, you’ve probably noticed that you can’t play the games unless you agree to provide the application with your email address.

These “Ville” applications are not the only ones that capture personal information. In fact, before you install pretty much anything on Facebook you get a message stating that the application has permission to take information from your profile and your friends list that it supposedly “needs in order to work.” You will also find that Facebook can connect with the address book on many popular email programs in order to suggest friends for its members. They may not know that this is so.

Manzella stated that, thanks to this “helpful feature,” she was invited to be friends with both her divorce lawyer’s paralegal and her plumber. If you think about it, Facebook is a total gold mine for identity thieves. It’s basically a huge database of personal information – from millions of people all around the world. If identity thieves can find a way to exploit it, they certainly will not hesitate.

Using applications only makes your information more widely shared, especially when you invite friends to use the application too, and they invite their friends, and so on and so forth. The best thing you can do for your personal information is to not use any of these games, no matter how much fun you think they are or how badly you think you’re missing out by not playing them. It is simply not worth the risk.

Also, be careful what you share in general and who you decide to connect to. It’s probably not wise to connect with your orthodontist’s friend’s uncle, even if you both have the same taste in music. If you insist on connecting to anyone and everyone, delete all personal information from your profile, including your address, your birth date and your email address. Also, be careful what you post publicly. You don’t want strangers knowing where you work or where you’ll be this Friday night.

Hopefully, it won’t be playing Farmville.

Learn more about identity theft prevention on our blog.

Identity theft fraud alert is now more than ever important. The average person nowadays is more than aware of the vicious and personal crime of identity theft. This crime affects more than 10 million people per year. And the numbers every year seems to always increase. Being a victim of identity theft can cost you a lot of money and a lot of time.

The average working person can expect to lose anywhere from 5000 to 14,000 and wages just because they have to take time off to fix this crime. And 32% of the victims of ID theft can expect to spend a year or more dealing with their cases in court to fix the damage that has already been done.

The problem with this crime is that most people are not taken the proper steps in preventing the crime from affecting them. Most people feel that by simply hiding their valuable information and shredding documents containing their Social Security number and other valuable personal information will be enough protection. However this is not the case. ID theft has become much more advanced than that.

In fact the technology is available to put together shredded documents in order to know exactly what they need to know about you. This can be a shocker for a lot of people. In order to fully protect yourself from this crime it is much better to get full protection from professional ID theft fraud alert services that will safeguard your finances and your future.

Usually the best ID theft fraud alert services that can help safeguard you from identity theft offers fraud resolution assistance, credit and ATM card protection and also a financial guarantee to help finance you in case you have been a victim of identity theft.

To get guaranteed proven protection that safeguards you and your family from id theft click the following link today ID Theft Protection

As far back as I can remember I would often be approached in parking lots by someone in a van who was trying to sell me home stereo speakers. The speakers were always from a retailer’s loading dock or from trucks that had extra unaccounted inventory. And today was my lucky day.  The ruse was when you got the speakers loaded into your trunk, you were generally getting them in their new box. But the box just had pieces of wood.  Anyone thinking they were getting a deal, was just getting firewood. This is classic bait and switch.  Be more aware of these scams and protect yourself from them.

A twist on this scam happening all over is with laptops. The Business and Heritage reports “As a woman got out of her vehicle, she was approached by a man who had exited from his car. In his car were a woman in the front seat and a kid in the back. He approached the woman and showed her a laptop.  He explained that his girlfriend is a manager at Best Buy and that he had gotten a great deal on some laptops like the one he had. But, now he needed the money more than he needed the laptops and said he would sell them to her for $350.00 each. He had four of them, each in an individual Fed Ex box in his car.  She accompanied him to his car, where he opened two boxes, and she saw what appeared to be two laptops. One was a black laptop with a Best Buy sales tag of $1999.99 and the other was a white Apple laptop with a $1999.99 price tag on it. Both were packaged nicely in plastic bubble wrap in Fed Ex boxes specifically made for shipping laptop computers.

The woman called some of her friends and they all wanted to buy one, so she bought all four of them for $1,000 in cash, on the spot. The scammer loaded them into the woman’s car and quickly left.  After the woman got back to her hotel, she discovered that the “computers” were actually several packages of notebook paper sandwiched between a black notebook binder and a white notebook binder.”

PT Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Even old scams with new twists make smart people stupid. It’s not difficult to get swindled out of your money in a scam like this. Everyone wants a deal and everyone likes to think they are too smart to get scammed. Always keep in mind what Mom said, “If it’s too good to be true, then it is.”

Identity thieves are becoming more sophisticated with every passing day. Don’t wait until it’s to late. Identity theft can happen anywhere to anyone. In line at the store, online at home or when you’re buying your morning coffee. Identity theft is one of the most common problems that people face today. Any of your personal information can be used to commit the crime.

Identity theft-protection company Lifelock is in the news this morning. The company, headed by CEO Todd Davis, is known for its challenge ad (reproduced below) which has been running for a couple of years. Identity theft can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone. Identity fraud has become a huge concern in today’s new age and even though precautions have been taken to correct the situation there has not been much success. In the US approximately 120 million citizens had their private records exposed in the last three years causing approximately 27 million Americans to become victims.

Identity theft in the most extreme cases allows people to get insurance in your name, open false bank accounts and even can provide a cover when arrested for other crimes. Ident-A-Kid’s Immediate Response Card systems utilize an extremely fast digital data acquisition system. A complete profile of each child, including fingerprint, photograph, height and weight, is acquired in less than 15 seconds. Identity theft is the most rapidly growing crime in the world. It’s now bringing in more money than drug trafficking.

Credit

Credit card fraud is the most common form of ‘identity theft.’ It threatens no liability and only a little bit of inconvenience to most consumers in the United States – consumers that are prudent, anyway. And I’ve never understood what these services would or could do to prevent or mitigate a true impersonation fraud. Credit card companies still sent actual credit cards in their pre-approval mailings and one was stolen out of my mailbox. A year later, I received a collection notice that over $2000 was charged at a retailer blocks away from my home. Credit card fraud is often confused for identity theft because of those clever commercials with the funny voice-overs but it’s really a walk in the park compared to identity theft. It won’t take just a few phone calls to clear it up either.

Credit monitoring is an afterthought. What credit monitoring is, is selling you your own data.

Fraud and Your Credit

Fraud consistently costs the consumers in the long run. No one is magically absorbing those costs without passing them along to the consumers. Fraud alert ensures that creditors call you and verify your identity before opening any new credit lines. You can put a fraud alert on your credit report yourself if you call any one of the 3 credit reporting companies.

Checkout LifeLock

Check out LifeLock and protect yourself and your family from identity theft. Check out the possible LifeLock coupon codes or LifeLock coupons that will save you money on your purchases. Now if you don’t see a promo code or discount available that may mean that Lifelock is currently not offering any savings, but they might have new deals onsite- so you can try clicking on one of the links below and find out.

Pj Germain is a former law enforcement officer and current security engineer researching Identity Theft Prevention [http://idtheft.insideinfoguru.com/id-theft-prevention-services]. You can view more articles on LifeLock Coupons [http://idtheft.insideinfoguru.com/lifelock/lifelock-coupons] at his site: idtheft.insideinfoguru.com

You don’t have to be some sophisticated mastermind to be an identity thief. One of the reasons there are about 10 million identity theft victims each year in the United States alone is because people make it easy for thieves to get their information. The worst offenders: people 18 to 24, who, according to Javelin Research, do the least to protect themselves and take the longest to notice when someone compromises their credit. Identity thieves love people who don’t check their credit, especially after they’ve been victimized. It lets them continue to use their accounts with impunity.

The CEO of Lifelock, Todd Davis, told Channel 3 News in Arizona, ““The criminals, if they were willing to work hard, they’d be productive members of society. The reality is, as long as you make it hard, you won’t be the next victim.”

So how do you make it hard for thieves to get your information? Well start by eliminating the simple ways your information gets leaked. *Don’t use the same passwords for your bill pay and bank accounts as you do for less sensitive sites, like social networks. *Don’t throw credit card ads, bills and statements in the trash or recycling without shredding them. *Don’t forget to install virus and malware protection on your computer, and always password protect it when you’re not using it. *Don’t submit personal information online, or give it out over the phone, unless you know for a fact that you can trust the person or website that’s receiving it. *Don’t write your personal identification number on your debit card or credit card, and never write passwords in a place where others can easily find them. *Don’t use your birth date, your Social Security number or the word “password” as your password for anything. *At the very least check your credit reports for free with annualcreditreport.com the government legislated website.

Once you’ve taken care of the simple stuff, it’s time to make things a bit tougher still. To do that, you’ll want LifeLock identity theft protection, for example, or another quality company such as those listed on our homepage. You probably know that some thieves tend to delve a bit deeper to find their victims, especially if they’re looking for someone with a high income or a very good credit rating. That’s where a plan can really help you out.

Even if you have an identity protection plan, or will soon be getting one, don’t start slacking on the simple stuff. An identity theft protection plan is not going to help you if you get a virus from clicking on a link to a bogus banking website. While it can help you if your credit is compromised, there’s nothing it can do to rescue a ruined computer operating system.

It’s every person’s worst nightmare. You’re simply going about your daily routine, living your life and minding your own business, when you receive a phone call from a bill collector. He says you owe thousands of dollars on a credit card you didn’t even know you had. Or maybe you apply for a loan and are shocked to discover that you’re turned down because, even though you pay each of your bills on time, you have a low credit score. Perhaps you go online to check your savings account balance and find that you’ve been cleaned out. In other words, while you’ve been engaged in the business of living, you’ve become a victim of identity theft. If you think that these are far-fetched scenarios, think again. Thirteen people have their identities stolen every single minute. Here, then, are answers to common questions about identity theft.

1. Am I safe as long as I don’t give out my personal information over the phone or online? Not at all. Take a minute to think about the people, organizations, and companies that have your personal information. Banks, other financial institutions and professionals, medical professionals, hospitals, schools, and retail merchants all store your personal information electronically. In other words, you really don’t control access to your information. If an identity thief breaches a bank’s, school’s, or insurance company’s security system, they will have access to vital information. Over the past several years, millions of credit card numbers, bank account information, social security numbers, and employee records have been stolen from trusted institutions.

2. Can I prevent identity theft? No, you really can’t prevent identity theft. Your personal information is in the hands of too many institutions and organizations; it’s like trying to close the barn door after the horse gets out. There are steps you can take that will prevent some avenues of identity theft (such as shredding papers with personal information that you’d normally throw out), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

3. Isn’t credit fraud the most prevalent kind of identity theft? Contrary to popular belief, only about a third of identity thefts relate to credit fraud. Even if you are impeccable about credit monitoring, it won’t defend against someone using your personal information for things like medical expenses, checking accounts, driver’s licenses, tax fraud, passports, and social security benefits.

4. What’s the best way to get true identity protection? The best way to get true identity protection is through a service that uses a multi-pronged approach. This involves credit monitoring that looks for signs of potential fraud and identity monitoring that screens public records and national databases for identity thieves that are using your name and social security number. In addition, the service should have extensive expertise in full identity recovery, including coordination with law enforcement agencies, should you become the victim of identity theft. It should also provide you with expense reimbursement insurance that covers all of the members of your family. The service you choose should also supply you with your personalized identity risk score that rates your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft. Only then will you be able to have the peace of mind knowing that you have done everything you can to defend yourself against identity theft.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web. Learn more about Identity Theft: Answers You Need [http://www.myinvisusdirect.com/ponyhunter/] or Majon’s FinancingInvesting directory.