On Facebook? Own a smartphone? You are at risk of Identity Theft
Posted by Adriana Tayraco on Thu, Jul 21, 2011
Long gone are the days when shredding sensitive paper documents would suffice to protect your private information. Identity theft has surpassed credit card and utilities fraud to become the number one complaint by consumers in 2010. With the increase in popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, smartphone usage and other mobile devices, the amount of personal information you are unwillingly providing to these thieves is massive. A combination of your name, last name, email, and/or address can be enough for someone to steal your identity online.
The past few months saw a number of scandals involving data protection breaches (Sony and Square-Enix Holdings, Android phones being particularly vulnerable to hacker attacks); unfortunately, too many people remain skeptical about the dangers of ID theft. In order to protect yourself, you can activate Google Alerts and change passwords regularly; however depending on your online exposure, chances are your information is already out there – they just haven’t used it yet.
You have worked hard to create a name for yourself and maintain an excellent credit. Why not protect it? IDfraudProtect.com was created to help you with this task. It offers a simple – yet incredibly complete - free search feature which allows you to screen their worldwide database for your stolen personal information. All of their data has been in criminal hands but made available on the internet. A team of experienced ex-police staff “scam the scammers” in order to obtain sensitive information and constantly expand IDfraudProtect database. With a color coded search result and a user friendly interface, IDfraudProtect allows you to evaluate the level of risk associated with your personal information. In most cases, the information provided by the report is enough for the user to take steps to protect themselves.
After you subscribe for their monthly protection package you will not only be notified instantly whenever any theft or purchase of your identity is discovered, you will also receive information with regards to online scams and compromised websites that you should avoid.
Be proactive! Be knowledgeable about the risks of identity theft before you share your information on the Internet, find out how it will be used and if it will be shared. You wouldn’t share your personal information with a complete stranger on the street; the same applies online.