Is Using Facebook a Risk to Your Identity?
Facebook has revolutionized the way individuals feel and communicate their ideas. Through status messages, photographs, links and other kinds of posts, individuals of all ages are now able to speak what’s on their mind and reach hundreds, if not thousands of people. Though this might be of some benefit, regrettably, this is a perfect way for criminals and identity thieves to gain access to private information and sensitive data. Identity theft on social media sites like Facebook is now uncontrolled and increasing annually
This information can be used by criminals to open credit lines in your name, because stealing of information occurs through such social-networking sites. They are able to commit these types of offenses: go on a shopping spree, take-out a mortgage, or purchase a car using credit cards in your name. I.D. theft can occur to you personally via your social networking websitea and induce issues for you months and possibly even years later on. Here are a few things you are able to do in order to counter these identity theft strikes.
Secure Your Private Information
FB frequently asks for your own personal information online including your name, address, phone, birth date, and in some rare cases, youSocial Security number and account numbers. Be skeptical of giving away that type of information on social media, since it’s possible that the information could be intercepted and used fraudulently. FB enables you to really set your security settings so you can manage who sees your profile.
Don’t Show Revealing Photographs
Additionally don’t actually put up a photograph of any sort of ID – student , driver’s licence and social security. There’s a single narrative of a man who, after seeing the grave of his own mother, posted a photograph of the tombstone on FB, providing would-be robbers the complete name of his own mother that’s frequently utilized as a protection measure by charge card businesses and lenders. This is really something you ought to never do- enabling felons to figure out your mom’s maiden name.
Use Strong Passwords
Passwords can be hard to recall particularly if you want to possess different passwords for each website that you simply go to. It’s significant to avoid ID Theft on social media websites to produce strong passwords. A strong password is a mix of specific characters, letters and figures, one that the thief might have a difficult time guessing. Among the passwords is really a mix of both lower and upper-class letters. Some specialists within the area advocate putting in numbers within the center of the password rather than in the start or in the end. Remember that in order to truly have a powerful password, the more it’s, the harder it’s for crooks to unearth. Lastly despite all these, use passwords which are simple to recall also – not just only your birth date or your daughter’s birth date, or an old address.
Review Your Credit File Often
It’s significant that you simply review your credit history regularly so that you simply will learn whether there are uncommon and funny activities in your credit file. You can track your credit file by ordering them in the three credit agencies (Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union). You may order these once yearly free of charge or better – subscribe to periodic reports or credit monitoring.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.
Have You Been A Victim of Spoofing?
Learning the language of identity theft can be a difficult prospect. We’ve talked about phishing, smishing, & vishing an and even oversharing in the past. We’ve examined how identity protection programs like Identity Guard can put you in an offensive position against most of these threats. Today, however, we’re going to be talking about what is known as “spoofing.” Sounds funny and relatively harmless right? Spoofing is the alteration of an e-mail header so that it appears to have been sent from someone other than the person who sent the e-mail. Now there are legal forms of spoofing, such as disguising your identity for fear of retaliation. Spoofing anyone other than yourself, however, is quite illegal… and an easy way for identity thieves to fool you into thinking that you’ve got to do something that you don’t really need to do.
How is spoofing even possible? Because the STMP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, doesn’t actually include any authentication mechanism. Although a security level can be negotiated by someone who is utilizing SMTP, this is often not done. When there is no security level in place, anyone with a computer, access to the internet, and just a little bit of knowledge can log into the e-mail server itself and send messages out as anyone on behalf of any corporation.
For the most part, we can recognize these ridiculous e-mails and simply delete them without falling victim to them. It’s pretty easy to do when you get an e-mail supposedly from Bank of America saying that you need to take action before your account is closed even though you’ve never done business with Bank of America. On the other hand, an e-mail that appears to be from someone like your supervisor or even your spouse asking for sensitive data to be sent for a legitimate sounding reason can be something that fools a lot of people.
E-mail spoofing is nothing new – identity thieves figured out this process back when e-mails first started getting sent around the internet, so it’s a two decades plus old problem… but that’s the issue – it’s still a problem today despite education and self-awareness programs. So what can you do to make sure that you don’t fall victim to a spoofing scam?
If you do get an e-mail that seems suspicious, contact your financial institution in person.
Forward the e-mail to your financial institution’s customer service and ask for an explanation.
Remember to never share sensitive information unless you can verify the website, you notice it is secure, and you’ve visited that exact login location before.
Contact others immediately if you feel that you may have been fooled by an exceptional spoofer.
When in doubt, just delete the e-mail and move on.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.
Protect Your Identity While Job Hunting
Gone are the days when it was enough to pick up the newspaper to find a job listing, pay a visit to the business owner, get a spot interview, and potentially be working the very next day. Some jobs have over 100 applicants for them, and more employers every day are relying on electronic application methods to streamline the hiring process. There are also a large number of job seeker websites available, like Monster.com, where applicants can upload a resume and then apply to multiple jobs with just a couple clicks of the mouse.
With all of that information available for literally millions of people, identity thieves are attracted to these sites like a shark is attracted to blood in the water. Besides signing up for identity theft protection services from a professional company like LifeLock or Identity Guard, what else can you do to protect your identity while trying to find a job?
You Should Never Have to Pay to Apply for a Job
We all crack jokes about those Nigerian scams that talk about how you’ve won millions of dollars in an e-mail lottery or some long lost relative as left a large estate in your name and you need to send money for legal fees to collect it. Yet when it comes to job seeking, identity thieves get the financial information from hundreds of victims every day because they tell them they need to spend a few hundred dollars on specific software or need to pay for background checks up front before they consider a resume.
You never need to pay for anything up front when it comes to a job application. If a company tells you that you must pay for a background check to be considered for employment, ask if that cost can be put onto your first paycheck instead – after all, you are unemployed and need money for food, right? Before paying for anything, even as an independent contractor, make sure you have a solid employment agreement in place before releasing any payment. Then, if you are sure of a cost that is something you need to front, make sure that you don’t give out your financial account numbers. Get receipts for everything. Verify, Verify, Verify
An employer has sent you an e-mail saying that they found your resume online, that you look like an awesome person, and they would like to have you start a job next week. Sounds like a dream come true, right? Then, when you hand over your Social Security number to get your new job started, you never hear from them again. You’ve just lost the key to your identity in this scenario.
If you’ve never heard of a company, verify them. Go to their place of business if possible. Visit their website to look for scam signals, such as:
- fake contact information,
- cut and paste content,
- no customer service, or
- generic information that tells you nothing about what they do.
Utilize the resources that are available to you as well, such as the Better Business Bureau, to determine their legitimacy. Always ask questions!
Limit the Personal Information on Your Resume
A prospective employer from an online bank of resumes needs to know your physical location, some sort of contact information to get a hold of you, and your name. That’s really all you need to get the ball rolling with an online resume – if an employer is interested in you, then they will contact you through your chosen method to get additional information. Many applicants, however, overshare their personal information, with many thinking this gives them an advantage because it lets an employer know a little more about them.
What it does, however, is give identity thieves all the information they need to steal your identity. A good rule of thumb is to use your name, state, and e-mail address as personal information for an online resume. A city may sometimes be helpful, but remember – the more information you freely share, the more likely you are to have your identity stolen. If someone needs more information because they’re interested in you, they’ll ask for it. Don’t just hand out more information – it really doesn’t make you more attractive to the right kind of employers.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.
You Lost Your Social Security Card…Now What?
I Lost My Social Security Card! This is one phrase that will strike fear in just about anyone.
You’ve left the restaurant, you’re having a good time with those you love, and when you get to the next place on the agenda for the evening you realize that you were having such a good time that you forgot your wallet. This causes a slight heart palpitation for a moment as you dash back to the restaurant, bother the people who are sitting at your table now as you frantically search for where you might have dropped it, and in the end, you get zero hope from the statement from the hostess who says they’ll contact you if they ever find it. Losing a Social Security card happens more often than you might think – if you’ve lost yours, then here’s what you’re going to need to do to get another one… along with the protective steps you’ll need to take if whomever has your card has some plans for it.
The First Thing To Do Is File for Your Replacement Card
Because of the time that it takes to get your card and the amount of materials you may need to obtain that you don’t have, the first step you’ll need to take is to work on filing for your replacement card. In order to get your replacement card, you must:Gather documents proving your:Identity. This is done through your driver’s license, a state issued non-driver identification card, or your passport. If you don’t have one these or cannot get a replacement copy in 10 business days, then there is a secondary list which the Social Security Administration can use. Non-citizens will need to provide proof of their immigration status through their I-551, I-94, or I-766 froms.U.S. citizenship. If you have not established your citizenship with the Social Security Administration, you will need to provide an original copy or agency-issued certified copy of either your birth certificate, your passport, Certificate of Naturalization, or Certificate of Citizenship with your application materials.Immigration status. If you are not a U.S. citizen, then you’ll need to provide proof of your immigration status through the identity documents listed above. In addition, if you are a student or a J1 visitor, you may need to provide additional documentation regarding your legal status in the country.
Once you have gathered the documents that you need to prove that you really who you say you are, you will then need to complete an Application for a Social Security Card. Be aware, however, that you can only receive up to 3 replacement Social Security cards in a calendar year and that there is a cap of 10 maximum replacements that can be issued to you.
Once you have filled out the application, you simply take it or mail it and your supportive documents to either your local Social Security office or your local Social Security Card Center.
The Social Security Administration cannot take any notarized copies or unofficial documents, such as a hospital or city birth certificate. You won’t lose the documents that you have to send in, however – anything you mail in to the SSA will be returned to you along with a receipt. Just plan ahead if that means you need to mail in your driver’s license!
Then It’s Time To Protect Your Identity!
Now that you’ve completed the process to get your card replaced, you need to begin the process of monitoring your identity to make sure that no one plans to compromise it. The easiest method is to simply sign up for a credit monitoring service. There are free ones that can take away most of the pressure of remembering to take care of monitoring your identification items on your own and low cost ones that can monitor virtually everything.
If you’re more the “hands on” type of person, then there are plenty of resources available to you as well. The first thing you should do is request your free credit report from your preferred credit reporting agency. Though you can request one from each agency at the same time, you’re better off ordering one report from one agency every 4 months because you’re limited by Federal law to 1 report per agency every 12 months. Some states also offer free reports, however, so be sure to take advantage of all the free reports you can get because the more you can monitor, the more you can prevent something bad from happening!
You’ll also want to consider putting on a fraud alert or a credit freeze. These can help you to be able to prevent an identity thief from ruining your credit because you’re alerting lenders that someone has potentially compromised your identity or even completely locking lenders and yourself out of your credit report.
Finally, you’ll also want to alert your financial institutions about what has happened so that suspicious activities, such as requests for new accounts or the closure of any long standing accounts, have another level of verification beyond a fraud alert.
Losing your Social Security card can be scary, but the recovery process doesn’t have to be when you follow these step by step instructions! By taking these steps, you can successfully get your Social Security card replaced and eliminate the threat of identity theft. It only happens, however, when you take proactive steps to make sure these tasks happen. There’s rarely a need for you to carry your social security card on your person, so lock it up in a safe place at home, in the event you happen to lose your wallet again in the future.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.
Smishing Can Smash Your Identity
Many folks are aware of the problem of phishing, where you get a strange e-mail informing you that you’ve won some e-mail lottery, or that your account has been locked and you need to verify your information to unlock it, or even that someone you know is in trouble somewhere and they need your monetary help to be able to get home. This causes you to willingly give your information over to the identity thieves in the hopes of getting a return on that information in some way. Smishing is similar to this practice, but it involves attempting to get your information from a SMS text that you receive.
Smishing involves receiving a very tempting text that seems rather believable. It could say that you’ve won a $1,000 gift card to one of your favorite stores, that you’ve won a free vacation, that you’ve been signed up for a website that will cost you $5/day if you don’t unsubscribe, or even that your spouse has lost their phone and needs help at this new number. The variables are absolutely endless, but there is one thing in common with them all: that you don’t remember entering into a contest, signing up for anything, or that your loved ones wouldn’t text you in such a way if they were in trouble.
That doesn’t stop people from clicking on that included link sometimes from their smartphone – you know, on the off-chance that it might be true and they might be able to purchase a new PS3 or something. If you’re one of those folks who ends up clicking those links sometimes, as one of my favorite authors would put it – don’t panic! Clicking a link might transmit some data about your phone to the potential identity thieves and you might have some malware installed, but nothing that is irrecoverable. The trouble comes when you start putting in your personal details to submit through the link where Smishing becomes an issue.
If you are curious about a SMS link that you have received and you want to investigate it, an easy way to get around some of the issues is to plug the link you receive into a web browser on your computer that has current anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-malware definitions. This way, if the link isn’t a true prize, you will be protected through your computer instead of having your smartphone exposed that is likely running no protections whatsoever.
Another easy way to determine if a SMS text you have received is legitimate is to simply call the customer service department of the company in question, like your bank, or to contact your loved ones on your own to verify the story. If you have won something or have been signed up for something without your permission, contacting a company directly will give you the accurate information you need. In the off chance that there are charges on your credit or debit account that aren’t supposed to be there, you can immediately contest them.
Some other easy ways that you can help to protect yourself from Smishing schemes are:
- to not reply to the SMS text;
- to teach our kids about Smishing so they don’t become victims as well;
- to forward a copy of the Smishing text to your cell phone provider to alert them to the scheme;
- to place a fraud alert on your credit report if you believe you may have inadvertently given sensitive information away; or
- to sign up for a comprehensive identity theft protection plan from a preferred provider.
If you believe that you have been a victim of a Smishing scam, you should also file a complaint at https://www.ftc.gov, and then be sure to visit the remainder of this site so that you can learn what you can do to help prevent this from happening to you again in the future. Protecting your identity is becoming more and more critical with every passing day. Knowing what Smishing is and not falling into its trap is just another way that you can fight the evils of identity theft and not let the criminals win.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.
Understanding Your Credit Score
Most people these days realize that their entire financial history is chronicled in a detailed credit report. Almost 70% of people, however, don’t realize that the information that those detailed credit reports contain is then calculated into a three digit credit score. You can have a pretty good repayment history on a lot of items, but it doesn’t take too many negative reports on your credit report to make your credit score drop like a heavy rock thrown into a pond. In fact, some negative events can take up to 160 points off of your credit score. That’s definitely something that you don’t want to have happen to you without your knowledge… right? But that can happen to you if you don’t realize the importance of your credit score.
Why is Knowing Your Credit Score Important?
There are two important reasons why it is important to know what your credit score is at minimum on a month-to-month basis:
because lenders will generally grant new lines of credit based off of your credit score & not off of your credit report; and
knowing what your baseline score is will help you be able to determine if an identity thief is prowling around.
Your credit score, which is a number that falls between 300 – 850, is a gauge on the overall health of your financial decision-making. A higher credit score will bring you better interest rates, friendlier repayment terms, and the ability to borrow more money. A lower credit score can result in higher interest rates, rigid repayment terms, and potentially a lack of ability to borrow any money whatsoever.
What is a Good Credit Score?
So what is a good credit score? Anything over 650, as for a vast majority of lenders, this is the number where better rates and terms come into play. Yet remember – a perfect score is 850, so there is 200 points of improvement to be made. The good news is that the average credit score in the United States is 720, so you’ve likely got good credit and you don’t even know it.
When an identity thief strikes by opening up new lines of credit, maximizing those credit lines, and then failing to pay anything on them, your credit score will go down. If an identity thief gets a mortgage in your name that is then foreclosed upon, your credit score could go down as much as 160 points. A false bankruptcy in your name because of an identity thief could result in a credit score reduction of 100 points. That’s why detecting any fluctuation early, even if only a point or two, is so critical to preventing the damage that an identity thief can do.
What Makes Up a Credit Score?
Knowing what makes up your credit score helps you to be able to know how you can improve it… and know where identity thieves might be chipping away at you if your score is dropping unexpectedly.
35% Payment History: Having a history making of payments on time and not having any missed payments on all of your credit lines is one of the most important items lenders look at on everyone’s credit history.
30% Amount Owed: This looks at the amounts you owe in relation to the total amount of credit that is available to you. People who are closer to maxing out all their credit limits are deemed to have a higher risk of making late payments in the future, and this can lower their credit score. Not having any credit activity on open credit lines for a lengthy period of time can have the same effect.
15% Length of Credit History: A credit report containing a list of accounts opened for a long time will always help your credit score. Having a lot of new accounts opened in the last few months will not.
10% New Credit: Opening several new lines of credit in a short period of time can lower your credit score twice. Multiple credit report inquiries can represent a greater risk because it appears that you may be attempting to obtain new credit, but this does NOT include any requests made by you, an employer, or by a lender who does so when sending you an unsolicited, “pre-approved” credit offer. Also, to compensate for rate shopping, the credit score counts multiple inquiries in any 14-day period as just one inquiry instead of multiple inquiries.
10% Types of Credit in Use: Is all of your credit in credit cards? Or do you have a mortgage, a vehicle loan, a department card, & a couple credit cards? More variety will equate to a higher credit score.
How Can You Monitor Your Credit Score?
There are two very easy ways to monitor your credit score. You can:
sign up for an identity theft protection service plan that includes credit score monitoring; or you can pay one of the three major credit bureaus to access your credit score and your credit report.
Now some states do offer their residents the ability to access their credit score for free, in addition to the free credit reports that you are entitled to under Federal and State laws. Be sure to check your local resources to determine what kind of products are available in your area and what you may need to do to be able to access them.
By monitoring your credit at least monthly, you’ll be able to tell if your credit score is doing something that it shouldn’t be doing, and knowing what makes up your credit score can help you to boost it higher. Identity thieves are counting on the fact that you don’t know this information… but they do.
Mike Carter writes about consumer credit for SIF. He has been a speaker at Financial Freedom Summit in California. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, USA Today and MSN Money, and on the Associated Press wire. At one point he held a perfect 850 credit score and he is a serial mortgage refinancer.