Protecting yourself against Identity Theft

Identity theft has grown in a few short years to be a multi-million dollar business. Identity thieves have devised many ingenious ways to scam innocent victims out of their money and assets, and in the process they’ve ruined the credit history of countless people. Fortunately, however, there are ways to protect yourself.

The first thing you should do is tightly guard all of your important financial information. This includes being extremely careful about giving out your social security number, date of birth, bank account numbers and credit card numbers. Only give out this information to essential individuals who could not do business with you if you didn't provide it. Those places that are relatively safe to give out this information include banks, debt consolidation services most doctor's offices, secure online websites, the police, hospitals, and major utility companies where you get your home electricity, gas and water from.

If you release this information to just anyone who asks for it, no matter how authentic they may seem, you're just asking for trouble, as doing so will put you at a very high risk of some identity thief stealing your valuable personal information and then posing as you in future financial transactions.

Another thing to do is to protect your credit file, every three months, you need to get a copy of your credit report to see if there are any charges on it that you didn't authorise. If there are, it's likely an identity thief has already stolen your identity. In that case, you need to alert the credit bureau to put a freeze on your account so that nobody can use your personal information until you get to the bottom of it.

Shredding your old bills, invoices, receipts, and unnecessary documents is also something you should do on a regular basis. Don't think it's safe just to crunch up old papers with your personal financial information on it and toss it out in the trash. Many identity thieves scrounge through dumpsters in an effort to steal personal information such as social security numbers, bank statement information, and credit card numbers along with their expiration dates.

You can also protect yourself further by watching who's around you when you're using an ATM. Many identity thieves will simply slide a device that looks like a credit card into the ATM after you just used it. They can then obtain all your personal information and then use it to steal your identity by buying things under your name and having it shipped to an anonymous address.

If despite using these protective methods, you still find yourself a victim of identity theft, you need to first contact your local police. Then you need to contact your bank and credit card companies, in some cases the debt consolidation service you’re working with, and have locks put on all your accounts until the situation is fully cleared up. Once law enforcement has helped solve your problem, you can then gradually reopen and unlock your accounts. But even in the best case scenario, there can still be small, but lingering damage to your credit history until it's fully rectified over time. 

Mary Allen is a guest post author for www.nonprofitdebtconsolidationservice.com.