One of the easiest ways for an identity thief to get access to your personal information is through an organization you most likely do business with every day: the U.S. Postal Service. It is very easy for a thief to find your account numbers, and sometimes even your Social Security number, just by going through your new or discarded mail. Here are some thing s you can do to protect yourself.

Shred any mail containing personal information before you throw it out. It is not uncommon for thieves to dig through garbage cans and recycling bins hoping to find information they can use. Shredding this information stops them in their tracks.

Put your outgoing mail that contains personal information in a locked box. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock, use one of the blue federal mailboxes or drop your mail in the bin at the post office.

Don’t let incoming mail sit in an unlocked box. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock on it, make sure to get the mail immediately after it arrives, or at least as soon as possible. If this is not doable due to your schedule, you may want to consider having your bills and statements delivered to a post office box, or canceling the paper versions altogether and opting to receive them online.

You can now view your credit report online, so that you don’t have to have that information sent to you via the mail. Just go to www.annualcreditreport.com, the only official site for credit reports sanctioned by the Federal Trade Commission, and request one over the Web.

Have someone bring your mail in for you if you’re going out of town. If this is not possible, contact the post office and ask them to put your mail on a temporary hold. If you will be away for an extended period of time, you may want to consider having your mail forwarded to your new location.

Report issues right away. If you find that your mailbox has been tampered with, contact your building’s management, your homeowners association or your local post office immediately to see about having it repaired. Report any suspected mail theft to the Postal Inspection Service by visiting the following website: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

Though following these tips will make your safer, you may want to consider the additional identity theft protection from the hassle and financial strain that identity theft can bring. With this crime affecting millions of people every year, it is bound to impact your life at some point. For as little as a few cents a day, you can receive 24/7 protection of your personal information from identity theft and other types of fraud, and get this same protection for your family members as well.

Since there are so many types of identity theft insurance offered, it can be confusing as to which one would best fit your needs. That’s why IdentityTheftLabs.com offers comprehensive reviews of the best identity protection services, as well as their pricing and other important details.

It’s no longer debatable whether or not cell phones have become almost as essential to American life as water and air. You can use them to watch movies, to send pictures, to make purchases and even to bank. Since you need passwords for the last two of these activities that makes them of special interest to identity thieves. If a thief can obtain your password, he or she can control your account and create additional accounts in some cases. This can be especially dangerous when you use your cell phone for banking.

Another problem with this cell phone technology is that some cell phone networks can be hacked. For instance, Nokia 1100 phones are selling for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market because of vulnerability in the software that allows thieves to pull personal information from the phone’s network to use or sell to others. It didn’t take long for the thieves to figure out this fact, even though the hackable phones are only of this one model and only those that were made in a specific German factory. Truth is, good news travels fast. Well, it’s good news for them anyway.

The first thing you should do to protect your cell phone is to put a password on it. This will make it so no one can use it but you, since you have to key in a code every time it locks up. Make sure it locks up on a regular basis, not once every 24 hours.

Secondly, don’t store account passwords on your phone. Even if you have it locked, a thief who gets it in his or her possession can probably figure out your password if given enough time, especially if it is simply numeric, as many phones require them to be. It’s best not to let the thief get access to anything else in the process.

Here is an old post that has some general password tips.

Thirdly, when you do type in your password, either to unlock your phone or to access your account, make sure there is no one nearby looking over your shoulder. You’d be surprised how much shoulder skimmers can learn just by being in the right place at the right time.

This careful behavior should help mitigate the risk, but it won’t guarantee an identity thief won’t get your information. Over 500 million records have been stolen in the last five years containing Americans’ account information and other personal details. Most of this information was not used by identity thieves, but the potential was certainly there.

To keep yourself safe, consider buying identity theft protection. It may not keep your information, or your phone, out of a thief’s hands, but it will let you know almost as soon as it gets there. You can find out if your info is on online databases for sell or trade, even before it’s been used fraudulently. Then you can take further steps to protect it and contact the authorities to help them go after the criminals. That’s just one more thing that your cell phone can help you with.

Whether you’ve been a victim of identity theft or you’re just worried that it might have happened to you, you have the legal right, per the FACT Act, to place a fraud alert on your credit file. The Fact Act states that to place a fraud alert on your file you must have “a good faith suspicion that you have or are about to become a victim of fraud or related crime including identity theft”.

What is a Fraud Alert

A fraud alert is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a warning of potential fraud that gets added as a note in your credit report. In theory, potential creditors will see this note and contact you before opening credit in your name, thus stopping identity thieves from completing their treacherous work.

However, in practice, a creditor doesn’t have to call you if you have a fraud alert on your file. All he or she needs to do is take an extra step or “reasonable measures” to verify that the applicant is really you. This could take the form of a phone call to the number you have on the fraud alert or the number on the credit application. The creditor could alternately choose to send you an email or could simply deny the application if verifying identity proves too difficult – which is excellent if the applicant isn’t you, but an inconvenience if it is.

Setting up a fraud alert is pretty easy if you just want a 90-day alert. All you have to do is call one or more of the major credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian, and ask to have one placed on your file. Each bureau has a dedicated number for this purpose, which you can find at the end of this article. Once you have an alert set up, you must renew it each time it expires to keep it in working order.

It gets a little trickier if you want the more comprehensive seven-year fraud alert. You’ll have to actually prove that you’ve been a victim of identity theft via a police report, court statement or other official document. This alert will include a statement that you’ve been a victim of identity theft in the past. To request an extended alert you’ll have to write a letter. Calling is not sufficient. Do a quick search and you’ll find several templates that can tell you exactly what terminology to use.

If you decide to remove a fraud alert, you’ll also need to do so in writing. This is an extra precaution in case an identity thief takes it upon him or herself to complete this step for you. However, if you simply have a 90-day alert, it may be worth it to just let it expire on its own.

To request that 90-day alert, use the following contact information:

• TransUnion, Fraud Victim Assistance Department, Phone: 800-680-7289
• Equifax, Consumer Fraud Division, Phone: 800-525-6285 or: 404-885-8000
• Experian, Experian’s National Consumer Assistance, Phone: 888-397-3742

If you don’t want to spend the time and energy, or simply want better protection, then invest in an identity theft protection plan. Though they no longer place fraud alerts on your behalf, they do monitor your credit reports and personal information for signs of identity theft and notify you of any potential risks. You can compare fraud alerts to credit monitoring here.

You may also want to read our LifeLock review, TrustedID review, or Identity Guard review for detailed information on how each service can help protect your identity. Combined with a fraud alert, which we recommend if you meet the spirit of the FACT Act, its a one two punch that should leave you standing and any identity thieves foiled.

Protect yourself today.

The saying goes that technology moves at the speed of light. That means every time we get a new laptop, cell phone, TV or anything else electronic, pretty soon there is a new and better one out there. This leads to millions of Americans throwing their technology in the trash, giving it away or dropping it for recycling each year. This also leads to hundreds of identity thieves getting their hands on old data on people’s discarded cell phones and computers and with 9.9 million identity theft victims in 2009 we don’t need to make it easy for these crooks.

BT’s Security Research Centre conducted a study where it looked at the content of 300 hard disks in machines that were resold and found that 34% of them still contained personal information on them from the previous owners. In fact, one machine even had confidential details about a U.S. military mission. Others contained bank numbers, medical information and financial data. There were even some personal identification numbers.

Does the thought of discovering these “gems” on a machine make these identity thieves head to eBay and computer shows? You bet it does! They can save money on a phone or PC and get personal information thrown in free of charge! They may also show up at yard sales and even at the local landfill or recycling center.

Before you start stockpiling your old hard drives and cell phone cards in your basement, turn to these tips instead:

• If you have the technical knowhow, use a wiping program to clear the data off the partitions on your hard drive and replace it with 1s and 0s. Simply deleting the files is not enough if you do not copy over them with new data.

• If you are less computer savvy, like most of us, remove the memory and hard drive from the machine and drill two to four holes in it in strategic places. A titanium bit works best.

• Take the memory cards out of the cell phones you wish to discard and break them up unless you plan to use them in another phone.

• Delete your address book and any other personal information you have saved on the phone itself. Then contact the phone’s manufacturer for detailed instructions on what to do next.

Note that you do not need to destroy the actual phone or computer. If you do, you’re really defeating the purpose if you were planning on reselling them. All you need to do is get rid of the memory, not the hardware. Then the next user can get right on the machine and start working with it with a clean slate.

The final thing you need to do is check any paperwork you’ll be packing with the phone or computer. Did you write your Microsoft password on the sleeve for the restore disk, for example? Did you scribble important numbers on the inside of your cell phone’s case?

It would just be silly to waste all that time wiping the memory and then end up giving away your information anyway because of an oversight it would have taken two seconds to correct. Sadly, this happens every day – though now it will not happen to you. It’s these easily overlooked mistakes that make an identity theft insurance plan a necessity in today’s age.

Though one can never fully protect themselves there are many steps we can take to reduce our chances of becoming the next victim. One easy way is to purchase identity theft protection but this should not be all you do, you must remain aware of how your identity can be stolen and vigilant in not letting it happen.

If you believe you may become a victim due to some previous mistakes or perhaps through a data breach letter where you were informed your personal information was compromised then you should also place a fraud alert on your credit file by contacting one of the main credit bureaus. You may even consider freezing your credit accounts.

You have the right to obtain one free credit report each year from each bureau. How important is it that you check your credit reports regularly? The short answer is – very. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States with over 10 million victims each year. And with so many options available to check your credit file, there is really no reason to leave your good name out in the cold even if you can’t afford better identity theft protection solutions.

How To Get A Free Credit Report

1. You can check your credit reports once a year for free no matter what. All you have to do is go to annualcreditreport.com, the site set up by the federal government, and put in your order. You will need to verify some personal information, like your address and Social Security number, but be assured that this site is legitimate. If you don’t feel comfortable revealing your information over the Internet, you can also order your reports in the mail or by phone.

Savvy consumers will check one bureau the first time – either Equifax, Experian or TransUnion – and then check the second and third bureaus at subsequent four month intervals so that they can essentially get a good look at their information all year round. This is usually satisfactory since the bureaus tend to share information with one another, but it is not a completely failsafe method.

2. You can get a free report each time you are denied credit. If you get turned down unexpectedly for a loan or credit card, it’s imperative that your order your credit report as soon as possible. This is often when individuals first realize that their information has been compromised. Directions should be enclosed with the denial letter you receive in the mail. You only have a certain window of time in order to obtain your report free of charge.

3. There are lots of credit monitoring services out there. Although there are many different options as far as credit monitoring goes, there is one thing they offer almost universally: access to credit reports, either from one bureau or from all three depending on your plan. If you’re signed up for credit monitoring don’t forget to take advantage of all that the service offers you.

If you don’t want to order your free annual credit report yourself a few identity protection companies such as LifeLock will order it on your behalf if you are enrolled in their service.

Unlike your credit report, you may not be able to come by your credit score quite so cheaply. However, this number is very important. It’s basically how lenders choose whether to offer you credit, and if so, at what rate. If you want to get your hands on this number, you may have to shell out a couple bucks. Alternately, you can sign up for a credit monitoring service that includes your credit score in its product package, for example, Experian’s Score Watch or Identity Guard include score from all three bureaus.

Once again, it’s a census year in the United States. Since the task of counting all of the citizens of this great country of ours takes almost literally all year long, it’s likely a census taker will be visiting your home soon – especially if you don’t return a census form you receive by postal mail. While it’s likely said worker will be legitimate, you need to be aware of the potential that this person could be an identity thief. Even the U.S. Census Bureau is advising people to use a little street smarts.

The Better Business Bureau, which is a large consumer watchdog group, offers the following pointers if someone pays you a visit:


1. Check to see that the census taker has an official badge. The person should also be carrying a confidentiality notice. You are more than welcome to ask to see these objects. If you’re not convinced that the person is a census employee, excuse yourself and call your Census Regional Office. You can find it at http://2010.census.gov/. This person should not request to come into your home.


2. Pay attention to what the person asks. He or she should only inquire about such thing as your name, your address, the number of people that live at the residence and possibly their ages. He or she may ask for a salary range to determine household income level, but not any more specific financial information. The person does not need your Social Security number or any banking contact numbers or account number. If you’re asked to give any of these details, excuse yourself immediately and call the police.

3. Do not respond to any census inquiries you receive by email. Workers are not instructed to contact you in this manner. Most likely, you will be contacted in person or through the postal mail. In rare circumstances, you will be contacted over the phone. If you’re not comfortable supplying information over the phone, simply tell the caller this and you can make other arrangements.



The bottom line is that the purpose of the census is to find out about the people that live in all areas of the country in order to provide adequate funding for public services and proper government representation. It is not any kind of marketing scheme or charitable program. If you see it presented in this manner, it’s likely you’re being contacted by someone who is not really with the Census Bureau.



If you’re speaking with someone that really is with the bureau, or you receive contact in the mail, it’s important to be cooperative and supply the information asked of you. Just make sure it is legitimate before you do so so you don’t give out more than you bargained for. Identity theft protection should always be first and foremost on your mind.


Any time is a good time for identity thieves to get personal information from people who leave papers containing such information in unlocked mailboxes, but no time is better than tax time, when we receive a number of items that have our names, birthdates and Social Security numbers on them. One way to try to stop the thieves is to contact your local post office and ask to have a hold put on your mail. Leave the hold on until all of your tax documents arrive. That way you’ll be sure they don’t make it out of the post office.

With this one problem solved, there are still others. Firstly, there are those identity thieves who think it is a good idea to try to impersonate IRS personnel. You could get an email purporting to be from the IRS saying that you need to go to a certain website in order to get your refund – and be conveniently supplied with a link to click on. You could get a phone call where the caller says he or she needs your bank account number to process your return. In either of these cases, it’s almost 100% certain that the person that’s contacting you is not from the IRS.

The IRS is aware of these scams and has even set up an email address, phishing@irs.gov, which you can use to report unsolicited emails. The IRS says that it does not use email as an initial contact point, and it doesn’t need your bank account number to process your return. If you don’t supply it, they can simply send you a check.

When you’re mailing your tax return, if you don’t decide to e-file, you should always go to the post office. Yes, this is true even if you have to drive there with the masses at midnight on the 15th of April. This is the best way to determine (a) that your return will actually get mailed out on time and (b) it will not get misdirected, either accidentally or on purpose, on its way there. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock on it, you should do this for all sensitive mail, not just especially for your tax return.

For additional protection, and peace of mind, you may want to look at an identity theft protection service. Some, such as LifeLock, even have fraud detection tools that notify you if anyone has changed your address, which thieves do to re-route your mail and get their dirty hands on your private information.

Once you’re done with your taxes, shred any paperwork you don’t need to keep well enough that it will be near impossible for a thief to piece it together again. If you have your tax information saved on your computer, insure that your firewall and your security software are up to date. Put a password on your machine so that others can’t use it if it’s at the office, in a public area or in a place in your home where visitors may get access to it.

Identity theft is not going down. Javelin Research stated that, like in 2008, there were about 10 million identity theft victims in this country in 2009. It’s best not to make yourself a promising target – that’s not where you want your refund to go.

Now that 2009 has come and gone and people’s thoughts are turning to April, and not just to the beginning of the spring but to the income tax season. While everyone has some work cut out for them as far as figuring out all those brackets and deductions, your job will be 1000% harder if you’re a victim of Social Security number identity theft.

So how do you find out if you’ve been targeted with this crime? Usually your notification will come via a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. Many victims get letters after they file their taxes saying that (a) they have filed twice or (b) they neglected to file for all of their income from a certain employer (often one they’re completely unfamiliar with).

This can happen to you if someone else has assumed your number and filed his or her own tax return, either in order to take advantage of a refund or because they’re not legally eligible for employment and need to appear legitimate. Of course, there is also the possibility that you did make a mistake on your taxes, so be sure to pursue that option first.

If you determine that you have dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s correctly, it’s time to report the issue to the IRS. There should be instructions enclosed in the letter you receive, but if you feel there is not enough attention being made to your case, you can also call the IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit at 1-800-908-4490. It’s important to work to resolve the incident as soon as possible to avoid accruing penalties on the sum that you supposedly owe due to the fraud.

Luckily, this situation only happens to a very small number of American taxpayers. It’s just another example of why it is so important to keep an eye on your Social Security number. Often thieves can get their hands on it by stealing your wallet with your Social Security card contained inside, looking through your garbage or the garbage at your employer or putting up fake websites and conning you into entering the information.

Some of the best ways to prevent this from happening to you are to keep your Social Security card at home, preferably in a locked safe; shred all important documents before discarding them and make sure your employer does the same; and never entering your Social Security number on a website unless you arrive at the address by typing it in yourself and are positive that the connection is secure. (If you have any caveats, don’t enter the number. There will be another way to provide it to the organization in question.)

If you think that a thief has his or her hands on your Social Security number, even if you haven’t had a problem with the IRS yet, contact the Social Security Administration as soon as possible and report the crime to the Federal Trade Commission and to local law enforcement. To help yourself even more, consider one of the best identity theft protection services. Then you have an identity protection company looking out for you and your livelihood.

Do you have the password 123456 on any of your accounts? How about 224466? If you do, it’s not surprising. It is dangerous though, and you should change it right away – and not to 1234567. A recent story published in the New York Times stated that one of every five people who has an account on the Web uses a password that can easily be guessed. In addition to 12345, 123456, and 12345678, these easily guessed passwords include “password,” “chocolate,” “monkey” and – of course – 654321. And of course you know, that if your password is guessed you will be exposing yourself to identity theft and fraud.

While you may think of yourself as a unique individual, the truth is that, as humans, we tend to follow the same habits as others. This includes what we think of when we decide on account passwords. According to Amichai Shulman, who works for Imperva, a security firm, a significant number of people pick from a surprisingly small pool of options. Imperva performed an analysis of passwords on a list leaked through a data breach that had nothing to do with Imperva and discovered that 20 percent of the 32 million passwords recovered were repeats of a sampling of just 5,000. Unbelievable no.

It’s perfectly normal to want to choose a simple password, seeing as how you may have several online accounts, not to mention accounts on your cell phone. However, identity thieves know people are doing this, and they are not hesitant to take advantage. They are even having success accessing “secure” accounts that lock a user out after a few incorrect password guesses. They simply have to know how many times they can guess incorrectly and then return once those requests have timed out. Also, since a lot of thieves have sophisticated technology on their hands, they can attack hundreds of accounts at a time until they get a “bite.”

So what is a consumer to do? Simple. Change your passwords. You don’t have to make every single one different from the rest, but you do have to make them different from what other people will likely use. First of all, forget commonly used words or sequential numeric sequences, whether forwards or backwards. Next, forget things like your first name or your birthday – or your first name and your birthday. Finally, get out of the common mold of a password that is five or six characters in length. Make yours longer, as long as you can realistically stand to type in each time you sign in — and use special characters, not just letters and not just numbers. See this post for even more tips on password security.

Thieves will likely stick to the status quo as far as length goes when they try to hack accounts. They will also likely stick to the most common passwords since they will give them the best results. Make sure those results do not mean access to your information. Of course, give more attention to your bank accounts and other super secure information, but don’t allow thieves to guess your passwords for items such as your Facebook profile either. Once they get access to these accounts, it only makes it more likely they can get to the bigger fish.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your identity? View our quick comparison chart to see what an identity theft protection company can do for you. To dig in even deeper read our reviews.

If you haven’t heard of cybersquatting, I’m sure you’ve at least seen it. It’s probably happened when you decided to guess at the website address for a popular company only to be led instead to a site full of random links, pop up ads or worse. That’s because the site is owned by a cybersquatter, who is capitalizing on the name to reap a profit.

However, there are cybersquatters that are even more vindictive. Some use their similar domain names to create similar sites so they can steal people’s personal information. That’s right. Again, it’s the identity thieves. Another practice that the thieves use is to watch popular websites to see when they are up for renewal. As soon as their registrations expire, the thieves jump on the domains and set up the sites as their own. This is sometimes known as “renewal snatching.”

In 2008, there were over 2,329 complaints filed in regards to cybersquatting, proving that the practice is a serious problem. It could get worse instead of better as more and more generic top level domain names (.com, .net, .tv, etc.) are becoming available. This means consumers will have to be increasingly savvy about where they are on the net; not just where they think they are. If you’re ever not sure about the legitimacy of a site, do not enter personal information on it. Instead, contact the company that supposedly owns the site using contact information that you know is correct. If you don’t have any legitimate contact information, don’t do business with that organization.

Even when being careful, it can be hard to keep yourself completely safe from online identity thieves. That makes it important to have a backup plan, so to speak. A good way to do so is to purchase an identity theft protection plan. That way, even if identity thieves do somehow acquire a piece of your personal information, you will find out as soon as possible; not after the thief has purchased a yacht or fled from the States to Brazil. This will make it easier to get your accounts corrected right away and hopefully catch the thief in his or her tracks.

No matter how hard authorities work to find and prosecute cybercriminals, the reality is that they are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Every time one crime is thwarted, there are two, three or even a dozen more already in the works. Because the Web is so vast and all encompassing, there is really no way to police all of it. Thus, the burden falls on the consumer.

While identity theft protection can certainly help to keep you safe, you still have to teach your family members to follow your example and be careful what information they make available online, whether it’s on a message board or a through a form at a supposedly secure website. Make sure you know who you’re submitting your information to at all times. Who knows when it will actually be an eager identity thief if you are not quite careful enough.