How to protect yourself online and avoid identity theft in 2017
With increased cyberspace threats in 2016, it only seems fair to provide you with a guide to some of
the steps you should take to protect yourself from identity theft in the new
year. Here are a few things you can do to protect yourself from identity theft.
1. Never give personal information to anyone who
contacts you by phone, text message or email unless you have confirmed that the
request is legitimate. Caller ID can be fooled to make it appear that a call is
legitimate and emails and texts can be sent from hijacked accounts or addresses
that may appear legitimate, but are slightly different from the real email
address or phone number.
Read our Editors' guide on How to be safe and Protect your credit card from being hacked and stolen while Shopping Online HERE*
2. Sign up for the Federal Do Not Call list at donotcall.gov
to avoid telemarketing calls. Here is the link to sign up for the Do Not Call
List. donotcall.gov It is important to remember, however, that the Do Not Call
List does not apply to charities so you still may receive telephone calls from
people collecting on behalf of legitimate charities, however, you can never be
sure when you receive a call purporting to be from a charity whether it is
legitimate or not so never give personal information or credit card information
over the phone to someone who calls you soliciting for a charity. If you are
feeling charitably inclined, go to the real website of the charity where you
can safely make your donation.
3. Consider opting out of pre-approved credit card
offers. These can be stolen from your mailbox by identity thieves who can then
apply for credit in your name. You can opt out of these offers by going to optoutprescreen.com.
4. Check your credit report at each of the three credit
reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion at least once a year.
Often people first become aware of becoming a victim of identity theft when
they find fraudulent charges on their credit report and the earlier you become
aware of the problem, the easier it is to fix. Because federal law provides the
right for you to get a free copy of your credit report from each of the three
major credit reporting agencies annually, you should stagger your requests to
each of the credit reporting agencies so that you get one report every four
months. Get your free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com.
5. While the credit reporting agencies and others tout
the use of fraud alerts on your credit reports as a way to help protect you
from identity theft, the truth is that fraud alerts by which someone issuing
credit in your name is supposed to notify you before issuing credit in your
name are not terribly effective and there is no penalty for a company issuing
credit to someone in your name without notifying you even if there is a fraud
alert on your credit report. A far better choice is to put
a credit freeze on your credit report. This will prevent someone from
accessing your credit report for purposes of obtaining credit even if they have
your Social Security number. Here is a link to a previous column I wrote about
credit freezes that explains how to get one.
6. Limit your use of your debit card to use at ATMs.
Don't use it for retail purchases because the law provides much more protection
from liability when your credit card is illegally used than when your debit
card is fraudulently used. In addition, even if your debit card company
provides for zero liability, your bank will freeze the bank account you have
tied to your debit card while they investigate any fraudulent use of your debit
card, which can be tremendously inconvenient.
7. Get an EMV chip credit card, if you don't already
have one and if the places you shop still haven't switched over to card
processing equipment for the new cards, tell them that they should do so soon.
Your shopping will be safer when everyone is using these new cards.
8. Use a strong unique password for each of your
accounts. This is particularly important because if you use the same password
for all of your accounts, you are more susceptible to identity theft if your
password is stolen in a data breach at one of the companies with which you do
online business. Having a strong, easy to remember password is not as difficult
a task as it may seem. Start with a phrase, such as IHate2 UsePasswords. This
is a good combination of capital letters, small letters and a number. Now make
it even stronger by adding a couple of symbols such as exclamation points at
the end so it now reads IHate2 Use Passwords!!!. This is now your basic
password which you can customize for each account by adding a few letters to
identify the particular account, such as Ama for your Amazon account so your
Amazon password would read IHate2Use Passwords!!!Ama.
9. Security questions are an important part of your
online safety. Armed with the answer to your security questions, a hacker can
change your passwords and take over your online accounts. Unfortunately, the
answers to common security questions, such as your mother's maiden name can be
found with little effort by an identity thief. Sometimes, you may unwittingly
provide that information yourself on social media where you may provide more
information to the public than you realize. The key then is to make your answer
to your security question nonsensical. So instead of the answer to your
mother's maiden name being "Jones," change it to something like
"Grapefruit." No identity thief will guess it and it is silly enough
for you to remember.
These are a few of
the things you should be doing to protect yourself from identity theft and
scams in 2016. In my next column I will give you more tips.
Read our Editors' guide on How to be safe and Protect your credit card from being hacked and stolen while Shopping Online HERE*
Steve Weisman
is a lawyer, a professor at Bentley University and one of the country's leading
experts in scams and identity theft. He writes the blog scamicide.com, where he provides daily
update information about the latest scams. His new book is Identity Theft Alert.
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