Every few seconds, someone’s identity is stolen. What are you doing to secure and protect your identity?
First of all, you must be very careful what to reveal online. Identity stealing is same like crime or scam that could result of loosing your data or more personal information like passwords, credit card numbers and banking information. Based on my research only in USA about 9 million Americans have their identity stolen each year. For some people recovering personal data can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars ! They can even loose jobs or have their reputation damaged. Some people were even proclaimed guilty for crimes they didn’t commit at all, so they had to prove they are not guilty.
You must protect yourself when you are online. Even when you are going online with your smartphone make sure you download most updated versions of security software. Learn to see the difference between normal email or spam and be aware what link you’re clicking on Facebook or some other social media page. People can copy someones name and make profile on Facebook adding friends from that person and telling them it’s their second Facebook page, and on that way find a lot of details that can be turned against you.
On every page that you have account, make sure to set very strong password, and don’t use same password on every page, try to rotate it, add some numbers or big and small letters, don’t include anything that has to do with your name, birthday or place where you live.
If you have kids educate them about this, especially monitor their time at Internet or with whom they might be talking to. If I had a child I would never let him have Facebook profile or any other social media until he’s grown up enough so he can think for himself. I see lots of parents having their kids profile opened and it’s still just a baby, or people writing every few hours what they are doing or where they’ve been, how carelessly is that. Most of the people are not bothered with it anyway but still watch out.
Try to limit your age, phone number, and email address that can be seen in some ” info ” sections, if you are registered member of forum or other webpage. This doesn’t mean just for online protection. You should lock up your documents at home too, limit what you are carrying with you also.
When you are buying something online and using your credit card, make sure to encrypt your data. You can do this with encryption software. That way when you’re paying the information you’re sending will be scrambled all over, and information will be safe in time of transmitting payment.
If you follow these steps you will have some good start for protecting your identity. Just remember that at the end, only YOU are the one who decides which information, for what, and to whom you reveal, because when its about crime internet is still Wild West. So below you can check out the infographic about more information about how to protect your identity:
