Bulletin Board Magazine, 2017 Volume 4

Identity Theft

XXXX Article by XXXX

Protect yourself from DIGITAL IDENTITY

THEFT by Jose A Rodriguez Jr. 

Bulletin Board | 14 | www.shorebuilders.org the accounts that you have online. Make sure your passwords are not easy things people can guess like your name, date of birth or kids names. Then create a paper password chart and keep in a filing cabinet or safe. 3. Check your bank account and credit card statements for any suspicious activity. 1. Make sure you have anti-virus and spyware detection on your computer. This tracks which website you are visiting and lets you know if the website is safe or not. Also, you are able to remove any viruses that may have been downloaded. It’s also important to clear your browsing history, downloaded history and cookies on a weekly basis. 2. Change your passwords every 90 days for I dentity theft is when someone steals your identity in order to commit fraud. They usually want to obtain your name, social security number or credit card number to be able to obtain credit or purchase items on your behalf. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America since a lot of what we do today is online. According to Identity Force, there were 41 data breaches in 2017 alone, which affected millions of consumers and put their information at risk for potential identity theft. One of the biggest data breaches occurred in July 2017 when Equifax, one of the three major Here are five ways to protect yourself from digital identity theft.

Jose A Rodriguez Jr.  Clean Slate Credit Solutions, LLC VP of Sales & Marketing

credit bureaus, was hacked. It was reported that 143 million consumers were affected due to sensitive data being stolen, such as names, addresses and dates of birth, social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. Another data breach was revealed in November 2017, when Uber discovered they were hacked in late 2016. It was reported that 57 million Uber users and drivers were affected due to the hackers downloading names, email addresses and phone numbers of Uber users. Uber decided to pay the hackers $100,000 to keep data breach a secret, rather than notifying those consumers affected. If it is your first time checking, go back at least 12 month and review each transaction to ensure you are not missing anything. If you recognize something that does not look familiar, contact that company right away to dispute the charge. 4. Review your credit report. See if there are any accounts that you didn’t apply for that are opened in your name. Also, review any inquiries that you did not authorize and even names & addresses that do not belong to you. Contact the credit bureaus immediately if you see something that does not right. 5. Enroll in credit monitoring that provides all three credit bureaus on a monthly basis. You want to get alerts and notifications of anything that happens on your credit report. If you only check your credit report once a year, you might not be able to catch something as soon as if happens.

Bulletin Board | 13 | www.shorebuilders.org