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Don’t wait until your identity has been “stolen” to worry about it. Identity fraud is a severe crime with serious repercussions that can take months or even years for victims to repair, not to mention hundreds to thousands of dollars. If someone has stolen a credit card, or has obtained enough information about you to start applying for new loans and credit cards, your credit score is going to be adversely effected. You will likely have difficulty obtaining a job (employers are making credit checks a regular part of the interviewing process), you’ll be denied credit for things you apply for. You will have a hard time, if not find it impossible, to obtain college loans, vehicle financing, credit cards, and mortgages. In some cases, identity fraud victims may even be arrested for crimes they haven’t committed, because someone else is living under their name as well.

How does identity theft happen? Most people are fairly careful with their personal information, so how can someone steal the “identity” of another human being and get away with it?

There are many ways identity thieves are able to get personal information from people. In some cases, the thieves work for companies where they have access to individual records via a computer or through paper files. Sometimes, a person doesn’t even need access to the information, they’ll just hack into the computer system and retrieve the information they need to steal someone else’s identity. One of the most traditional ways for someone to obtain your personal information is by going through your mail. Whether they steal it right from your mailbox or find it in the garbage, if someone finds bank or credit card statements, checks that have been voided but not ripped up, new credit card offers and tax related information, they usually have enough information to become “you”. People who go through garbage containers are known as “dumpster divers”, and will often be found looking for information in public trash areas and business dumpsters.

There are people and businesses in the world that have a legitimate right to access another person’s credit report. These people include landlords, employers, and businesses that must run credit reports prior to extending credit. Identity thieves often become employed at these organizations in order to obtain access to the personal information they need to do their crime.

Opportunities for thieves to find your information are endless. Identity thieves are smart; you have to be smarter.

There are a few cautionary things you can do to help prevent identity theft. After reading your mail, cleaning your desk at home or work, or cleaning out your car- do not just throw your personal items in the trash. Receipts, utility bills, bank statements, loan statements and credit card offers and statements should be completely destroyed prior to throwing away. Invest in a paper shredder and shred everything you are throwing away to eliminate the possibility of someone finding out information. Alternatively, you could burn your paperwork. When throwing away credit cards, shred them or cut them into many small pieces.

It used to be that people felt it would be difficult to use another person’s credit card. After all, you have to sign your name when making a purchase with a credit card, right? You need to protect your credit cards in the same way that you protect your cash. Merchants rarely check that the signature on the back of a credit card matches the signature that is signed on a receipt when a purchase is made.

If you have lost a credit card, or it has been stolen, report the situation to your creditor immediately. The credit card company will put a hold on the account to prevent any purchases from going through- and they can also track the location where someone has attempted to use the card. This will help in the efforts to find the thief. When you are dining at a restaurant, be mindful of paying with a credit card. Most waiters will take your card to the register to process it, and the card is out of your sight during this time. How do you know the waiter or someone else isn’t writing the numbers and name down from your credit card to use it for online purchases later on? Consider paying with cash whenever you are at a restaurant.

The biggest precaution you can take on a regular basis is to view your credit card statements and bank statements as soon as you receive them. Look for any purchases that you did not make, and call the credit card company immediately if you find something you are unsure of. If identity theft is caught early on, it can often be stopped before it gets out of hand. Also keep track of whether or not you’re receiving your statements every month. If you are missing a credit card statement, call the company to verify the address it’s being mailed to. It’s possible that someone filled out a change of address form at the post office or with the credit card company, and is receiving your statements at a different address with intent to use the information.

This article has been provided courtesy of Creditor Web. Creditor Web offers great credit card articles available for reprint and other tools to help you search and compare credit cards.

There have always been scams. Get-rich-quick letters, pyramid schemes, fake competitions, charities that don’t exist. The Internet hasn’t increased the chance of falling prey to scammers - it just makes it easier for the scammers to get your attention. The tools available to senders of disreputable e-mail are extensive and cheap. Spam is illegal in many countries but we still get a lot of it. The same goes for the scams that arrive in our inbox.

These days, there are so many possible scams that it can be hard to tell the difference between them. The first we’ll focus on is the practice of ‘phishing‘ - the word is derived from ‘fishing’ for consumer information, and ‘ph’ is a common replacement for ‘f’ in the hacking community. Phishing refers to the process of tricking you into giving up personal details such as your bank account or credit card details, or your passwords. Phishing is so prevalent on the Internet today that if you receive an e-mail purporting to be from your bank, it’s likely to be either a criminal attempt to find out your login details and steal your money, or a real e-mail warning you to be careful of this phenomenon.

When I use my online banking service, I’m faced with no less than three separate warnings to ignore any e-mails claming to be from my bank. At the same time I receive genuine e-mails from my bank, which themselves tell me to ignore e-mails from the bank. Another example is eBay, the popular web auction site. There was a time when eBay sent me regular e-mails about my account and the progress of my auctions. Now eBay urges their users to use an internal messaging system, akin to e-mails that only work when you’re using the site, to communicate with the company. It’s less convenient, but it is safer.

Due to the prevalence of this scam, most reputable companies, especially banks, will not ask you to take any direct action as a result of receiving an e-mail from them. They specifically request that you visit their company website directly and type in the address yourself, in order to seek more information.

Here’s what to look out for. A phishing e-mail will often look and read like genuine material from a real company. So when you receive an e-mail from a company with whom you do business, think before you respond. Why did I get this e-mail? What is it asking for? Do I really need to take action now or can I verify it first? If the e-mail seems suspicious, for example if it’s out of the blue, or contains spelling or grammar mistakes, you should check it before doing anything else by calling the company.

You can also visit the website of the company, and login to check on your account, but be very careful not to click on any links from the e-mail. Through the use of pictures that look like text links, and also through the use of IP addresses (like 203.23.45.61) instead of regular web addresses, the e-mail changes where you end up but not the text that you see on the screen. Using this method, scammers can unknowingly redirect you to malicious sites. This is how they get people to enter personal details which are then sent over the Internet: not to your bank, but to criminals. The solution to this is easy - type the address you know, for example www.paypal.com, directly into your web browser yourself, and make sure you don’t make any typing mistakes.

There are also e-mails which clearly and simply request - for example - your credit card number, and some people do reply with these details. Just remember that you’ll never be asked for such details in a legitimate e-mail.

An interesting but rare form of phishing involves criminals purchasing a misspelled website name, for example www.payplal.com, and constructing a real-looking site designed to fool people. Only a small percentage of web users will incorrectly type the name, and less still might go on to enter their private details, but this can be enough for web bandits to make a tidy profit.

It’s clear that banks and Internet giants are worried about the problem. But how concerned should we be, as Internet users? According to Gartner Research, phishing fraud between mid-2004 and 2005 cost over US$2.4 billion. Phishing is big business. The good news is that prevention is not difficult. The popular and free Gmail service, from Google, includes a phishing filter that alerts you to most kinds of phishing e-mails. You can find an anti-phishing attachment on Microsoft’s free MSN Toolbar and also in the next version of Internet Explorer (7.0). To report an e-mail or a site that you believe is a scam, you can visit www.antiphishing.com.

Technology can only help so much. The best defender against phishing scams is you. Take care when you receive e-mails and type in web addresses and remember, if in doubt: close your browser window or e-mail, and verify.

Article Source: http://www.softwaretalks.com/phishing/
MP3: http://www.softwaretalks.com/files/softwaretalks-phishing.mp3

SoftwareTalks features regular articles from in-house experts facing personal technology issues rarely raised in popular media: http://www.softwaretalks.com

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