Identity theft happens when someone uses the personal identifying information of another person, such as their name, social security number, credit card number, or birth date, to commit crime or fraudulent acts. The term identity theft has been coined nearly four decades ago. One of the most common characteristics of identity thieves is that they usually access their victim’s accounts using a variety of methods. Some of these include carrying out elaborate scams through the mail or computer, and making or receiving fraudulent charges on credit cards. Many times, the most insidious type of ID theft involves opening documents that appear to be from legitimate companies, but in actuality, they are fraudulent or have been copied illegally from a source other than the original company.
It’s important to understand what causes identity theft; because this knowledge can help victims protect themselves. While most people understand that stealing your own identity is illegal, it can happen more often than you think. In fact, if you’re someone else’s victim, you may never know about it until you go to apply for a tax return, and the ID check comes up negative. Or even if you bring your own laptop to an IT conference, the person you are working with might download a malicious program onto your computer without your knowledge and pilfer your information.
In most cases; you won’t know the identity theft occurred until you receive a notice from the credit bureaus. This will usually involve a letter, or a phone call. Your first reaction may be to call your credit bureaus and dispute the charges–which are absolutely fine. However, the best way to protect yourself from this type of crime is to develop a comprehensive identity theft recovery plan. Once you’ve had time to collect and compare all of the evidence (lost, stolen, and found) concerning the incident, you can develop an effective plan that will help you recover from ID theft.
One of the key components; of an effective identity theft protection plan is to have strong passwords and other access codes. These codes will allow you to access your accounts and financial information on a computer without having to disclose your identity. Some people recommend using social media identity monitoring programs to prevent ID thieves from gaining access to your personal accounts. Social media monitoring programs to monitor the activities of the people who use your social media networks. If someone sees that you are actively using the networking site(s), then it will increase the chances of them trying to gain access to your personal information.
Another element to an effective ID; Theft recovery plan is to freeze all of your bank accounts and credit cards. If a thief obtains a hold of one of your credit cards, they can easily use it to make purchases. freezing your bank accounts will prevent them from doing this. Additionally, if the thief has access to your social media accounts, then your entire social network can be compromised, which means that any information that they obtain will be passed along to many other persons.
If you don’t have a good identity theft insurance policy in place, then the thief could potentially steal your personal information and use it to obtain credit cards or even a home loan. The lifelong lifeline software is designed to detect any attempts to access your personal information. When your identity theft insurance detects an attempted transaction, it notifies the computer that has been compromised. The software notifies the user and notifies them in writing that their information has been accessed and that there is an impending attack.
