Identity Theft: Protect yourself at Home

Much of what is thrown in the trash can point an identity thief's telescope into our lives. But you have the power to blacken the lens.

Junk mail, prescription bottles, receipts and packaging to products allow identity thieves a chance to pretend to be us. These are the primary steps to protecting your personal identity from thieves.

1. Shred or tear up junk mail. Credit card offers are the number one way that identity thieves pick their victims. Before tossing that offer into the trash, make it unusable to a thief. Dispose of half in the main trash can and half in the bathroom trash. This way it cannot be reassembled easily to use the telephone options.

2. Follow the Federal law when disposing of prescription bottles. Remove all labels from the bottles, destroy the labels and dispose of labels and bottles in different receptacles. This keeps the thieves from being able to access your medical records and commit fraud.

3. If not keeping receipts from the stores or the bank, shred them. The best practice to keeping thieves from gaining access to your identity is to keep receipts and file them. If throwing them away, shred them first.

4. Voided checks must have portions removed to prevent identity theft. Remove the name plate and shred. Remove bank name, security identifier (located above the date line), amount box, a portion of both the routing number and the account number, signature line and payee. Dispose of the pieces in separate locations so that the check may not be reassembled.

5. Expired credit cards should be cut into no less than four pieces. As with checks, dispose of the pieces separately.

6. If receiving narcotics or insulin from a mail order service, destroy the packing slip completely. Dispose of the shipping carton separately from the inner packing after removing and destroying the labels from both.

7. Detailed usage of telephone bills should be kept at least three years. When disposing of them before then, shred the bills into small enough pieces that they cannot be reassembled.

8. All receipts and bills from loans should be kept for at least three years and destroyed before disposal.

9. All explanations of benefits (EOB) should not be disposed in trash intact. Separate identifying information from the body of the EOB prior to placing in trash.

10. Credit reports should be shredded when no longer of use.

If you feel you have not been able to sufficiently destroy or shred papers before their disposal, pour ammonia into the trash. Ammonia will react with most all vegetable inks and make them unreadable and unusable.

Don't let your trash can be a treasure chest for identity thieves.

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Prevent Online Identity Theft: The Basics

From phishing to pharming, the Internet is a hotbed rife with cyber-crime that nets more than drug trafficking: US$105,000,000,000. Try these easy steps to protect yourself from identity theft.

Personal Information
Never give your personal identity information online except to actual (flesh and blood, not virtual) friends.

If you trust your vendor, you may choose to share. Always opt out of optional mailings when you do, though. This information could pass to a third party without the vendor's knowledge or your consent.

Separate Email
Use separate email addresses for personal exchanges (like correspondence with actual friends) and shopping. Always use your non-personal email to sign up for services.

Public Sites
Avoid posting on news groups, social networks or other public sites. A public site is one with 100% free access and generally has no moderation.

Email Attachments
Do not open or run email attachments you did not expect to get or were not sent by a person you actually know.

Password Strength
Increase password security by using more than six characters, never using real words or common abbreviations and incorporating capital letters, numbers and allowable punctuation. A good password example is "R5jm2&Wq67g".

Never give your password to anyone or write it down.

Financial Information
Never give financial information in pop-up windows, instant messages or emails. Never click links inside them. Instead, go directly to the site with your browser to sign in or call the customer service telephone number provided by the legitimate site, not the missives, to verify any requests for information.

Payment Services
Use a third party payment service. The most popular and trusted are PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payments. These companies hide financial information from vendors.

Secure Websites
Use secure websites with "https:" at the beginning of the URL. They will display a padlock icon in your web browser's frame. Be warned: The lock can be counterfeited.

Receiving Email
Know your sender's email address. Be very suspicious of generically addressed email and dubious addresses. Legitimate emails will contain your user name and the appropriate website identification. They will come from only one email address, which will be supplied to you by the website.

Save It
Back up all important files. Never store copies of identifying documents or personal identification on your hard drive.

Security Software
Install an anti-virus, anti-spyware program and network firewall for added protection, especially for all computers with operating systems prior to Microsoft Windows XP service pack 2. Update these programs regularly. This means every 25 times you access the Internet.

The best defense is a good offense. Keep your guard up. With cyber-crime, there is no such thing as "too careful". Parents may be the "anti-drug", but you are your own "anti-electronic identity theft device".

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