Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Protect Yourself From Identity Theft

Identity theft is the quickest growing crime in the United States. With an identity theft occurring every 4 seconds, you have to do what you can to make ensure you don’t become a victim of ID theft.

There are a few things that you can do to reduce the probability of becoming a victim of identity theft. Probably the easiest thing to do is to use your good judgement. Protect your valuable personal information and do not give it to anybody unless there is a good reason to do so.

You need to make a regular habit of checking your credit report to make sure that there hasn’t been any unauthorized use of your personal information. If you are aware of what should be on your credit report, then it is very easy to see if there has been any unauthorized use of your personal information.

You should be using identity theft fraud protection to limit your risk to the possibility of having your identity stolen. Identity theft prevention is a speciality of several reputable services. identity theft protection solutions use a fraud alert on credit report to alert you anytime someone attempts to open up credit using your social security number.

These ID theft solutions also reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, including offers of new credit. Mail theft is one way your identity can be stolen, this reduces the chance criminals can use mail to steal your identity.

Also, ID theft solutions watch the black market and online activity for any unauthorized use or trading of your personal information. Thieves typically will trade your personal information, such as your social security number and name and address, which is then used to steal your identity.

The average ID theft victim spends hundreds of hours and thousand of dollars to recover from the crime. By using an ID theft prevention company, you are doing what you can to make sure you do not fall victim to ID theft. To find out more about these companies, you can read about LifeLock reviews.

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