Identity Theft

What is Identity Theft?

Iden­ti­ty theft occurs when some­one acquires your per­son­al infor­ma­tion and uses it with­out your knowl­edge to com­mit fraud or theft. It is a seri­ous crime and cas­es are grow­ing. An all too com­mon exam­ple is when an iden­ti­ty thief uses your per­son­al infor­ma­tion to open a cred­it card account in your name.

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Preventing Identity Theft

  • Don’t give out per­son­al infor­ma­tion on the phone, through the mail or over the Inter­net unless you’ve ini­ti­at­ed the con­tact or are sure you know whom you’re deal­ing with.
  • Don’t car­ry your Social Secu­ri­ty card with you; leave it in a secure place. Car­ry only the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and cred­it and deb­it cards that you need.
  • Don’t put your address, phone num­ber, or dri­vers license num­ber on cred­it card sales receipts.
  • Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers or phone num­bers should not be put on your checks.
  • Shred your charge receipts, copies of cred­it appli­ca­tions, insur­ance forms, physi­cian state­ments, checks and bank state­ments, expired charge cards that you’re dis­card­ing, and cred­it offers you get in the mail.
  • Secure your cred­it card, bank, and phone accounts with pass­words. Avoid using eas­i­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion like birth date, the last four dig­its of your SSN, or your phone num­ber. When open­ing new accounts, you may find that many busi­ness­es still have a line on their appli­ca­tions for your moth­er’s maid­en name. Use a pass­word instead.
  • Secure per­son­al infor­ma­tion in your home, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you have room­mates or hire out­side help.
  • Prompt­ly remove mail from your mail­box. If you’re plan­ning to be away from home and can’t pick up your mail, call the U.S. Postal Ser­vice at 1−800−275−8777 to request a vaca­tion hold.
  • Ask about infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures in your work­place. Find out who has access to your per­son­al infor­ma­tion and ver­i­fy that records are kept in a secure loca­tion. Ask about the dis­pos­al pro­ce­dures for those records as well.
  • Before reveal­ing any per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion (for exam­ple, on an appli­ca­tion), find out how it will be used and secured, and whether it will be shared with oth­ers. Ask if you have a choice about the use of your infor­ma­tion. Can you choose to have it kept confidential?

Pro­tect Your Iden­ti­ty: What Old­er Adults Should Know: click HERE for more. Test your­self with this fun cross­word puz­zle.

How to Check Your Credit Report

Order a free copy of your cred­it report at least once a year. Review the report to ensure that it is accu­rate and includes only those activ­i­ties you have authorized.

By check­ing your report on a reg­u­lar basis you can catch mis­takes and fraud before they wreak hav­oc on your per­son­al finances. Don’t under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of this step.

GET YOUR CREDIT REPORT

Credit Bureaus

Equifax
www​.equifax​.com
To order your report, call: 1.800.685.1111
To report fraud, call: 1.800.525.6285

Exper­ian
www​.exper​ian​.com
To order your cred­it report or to report fraud, call: 1.888.EXPERIAN (397.3742)

Tran­sUnion
www​.tran​sunion​.com
To order your report, call: 1.800.916.8800
To report fraud, call: 1.800.680.7289