How to Avoid Identity Theft: Six Crucial Steps
Identity theft is one of the most rapidly spiraling crimes in the modern era. Frauds and tech thugs, donning your persona, use your identity to use our credit splash the cash – your hard-earned cash. If you fall prey to this, the odds are that there would be considerable damage to your credit rating and hence it would be profoundly difficult for you to get another credit card or mortgage.
What can also happen is that this ID theft maneuver – that normally involves keyboard recorder or a cell phone spy – could leave you of your pocket for a long while, since digging oneself out of this quagmire can take as long as a year. And trust me, the worst thing that you can do is assume that this can’t possibly happen to you. There are over two million people in Britain alone that have been victimized by ID fraud and therefore you need to steer clear of the probing advances of hackers. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Do not use the same password for every single account
An average internet user has 26 different logins for various accounts and websites and yet, barely uses five passwords spread for those sites. The logical strategy is to have a different password for all the accounts that you have so that if one of your accounts – say your Facebook accounts – is hacked, the attacker still wouldn’t get their hands on your credit card.
2. Use passwords that are complex
The more secure passwords are the ones that are at least ten characters long, and are an alphanumeric hotchpotch of lower and upper case keys. Ideally they should have a blend of special characters as well.
3. Watch Out for Email Phishing
If there is an email that seems ‘phishy’, one that could ostensibly be from your bank, you need to watch out for it. Never give away the details of your account online; trust me your bank wouldn’t ask you for sensitive information via email.
4. Install Anti-Virus Protection
Steer clear of keyloggers and other genre of spyware by installing a proper security system. AVG and Avast have free anti-virus software; get them, update them regularly and stay a step ahead of identity thieves and hackers.
5. Monitor Bank Accounts, Credit Cards Regularly
If you check your accounts regularly you can ensure that there are no weird transactions going on.
6. Keep an Eye on Your Credit Rating
If there is someone who is using your identity fraudulently it is bound to affect the credit score, which would mean that banks would be a lot more reluctant as far as lending credit is concerned.
The thing is, you don’t have a single credit score. There are three credit rating companies that provide information regarding the credits to the banks. The banks in turn decide if they’d want to lend you the credit or not.
So yes, avoiding identity theft is extremely important if you want your credit rating to be trustworthy and your budget and fiscal side of things to function seamlessly.
