Why You Should Take Identity Theft Seriously

Credit Card fraud (26%): Credit card fraud can occur when someone acquires your credit card number and uses it to make a purchase.

Utilities fraud (18%): Utilities are opened using the name of a child or someone who does not live at the residence. Parents desperate for water, gas, and electricity will use their child's clean credit report to be approved for utilities.

Bank fraud (17%): There are many forms of bank fraud, including check theft, changing the amount on a check, and ATM pass code theft.

Employment fraud (12%): Employment fraud occurs when someone without a valid Social Security number borrows someone else's to obtain a job.

Loan fraud (5%): Loan fraud occurs when someone applies for a loan in your name. This can occur even if the Social Security number does not match the name exactly.

Government fraud (9%): This type of fraud includes tax, Social Security, and driver license fraud.

Other (13%)

* Never use your personal information as password- Most of the people have the tendency of using the personal information like date of birth, name, telephone numbers, pet name etc as passwords. Its easy for hackers to get your personal information.

* Do not use actual words- Never use actual or real words as passwords, because they are the ones prone to be hacked. In internet world there are lots of tools and softwares for hackers to get the passwords, so its always better to have a combination of words, unless the word itself is long.

* Use combination of words and characters- Using a combination of words and characters is the best way to make a good password. Combination of words can be usage of lower case and upper case alphabets, numerics and special characters like '_', '&', '.' etc.

* Do not use same passords for all- Most of us have the tendency of using the same passwords for all the sites for ease of remembering. This is again a wrong concept. Having different passwords gives more security as even if at all one of your password is hacked, other remain safe.

* Change your password frequently- Developing the habit of changing your passwords once in a month or two is again a good way
to secure passwords. Do not use the passwords again and again, make new passwords while changing old ones.

* Use password managers- Password managers are handy tools for remembering and securing passwords. Shankar has reviewed few online password managers.

* Use passphrases- Using passphrases, you can create a password which is hard to crack, but easy to remember. Eg: "My
Password is not easy to crack", you can make a password out of this sentence- mpine2c. You can replace 'to' with '2%u2032 and also use a combination of lower case and upper case.

If you receive an email from your bank asking for your login information, chances are it is scam. First and foremost, DO NOT REPLY TO THE EMAIL. It is most likely email fraud, coming from a cyber thief "phishing" for your personal information.

These scammers have become very good at making emails that look like the real thing. I have recently seen ones from Paypal and Bank of America that not only use the company's logo, but also display their privacy policy with links back to the company's actual web site.

One immediate clue is that the email will have a sense of urgency to get you to react. It may say something like "unless you respond within 24 hours, your account will be locked."

Remember, reputable companies will never ask you for your login information online.

To help combat this type of crime, go the the company's web site and look around for any information about Fraud. There will usually be an email that you can forward the fraudulent email you received to. This will help investigators find the criminals and help to prevent future

Finally, if you are not sure if this is a phishing scam or not, assume it is email fraud and DO NOT REPLY. If you are concerned about your accounts, call the company yourself, using numbers listed on your own paperwork, not the one from the possibly fraudulent email you received.

Bigger names equal better protection.

Go with reputable companies you've heard of," says Jim Stickley, co-founder, CTO and vice president of engineering at
TraceSecurity, a company that works with financial institutions to better their network security systems to deter identity
thieves.

When in doubt, check them out.

If you go with an unknown merchant or Web site, contact someone there who can verify the company's privacy policy for
you before you make a purchase. Ask if they'll send you a catalog.

If you receive an e-mail offer that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Urban legends and hoaxes have been around for centuries, but their popularity is on the rise because the Internet makes it easy to spread fraud e-mail scams.

Many e-mail hoaxes will trick you into forwarding messages about fake viruses or other fabricated stories. These e-mails waste time, clog inboxes, and might cause embarrassment when they're proven untrue. But there are other, more insidious types of fraud that might end up costing you a lot of money.

An advance fee fraud is a scam that hooks you with the false promise of large sums of money for little or no effort on your part. Once you're deeply involved in the scam, you're asked to pay certain amounts of money to expedite the process. You end up not making a dime.

Some examples of the most popular advance fee frauds:

* A foreign government official would like your assistance in transferring funds and will pay you a hefty commission if you agree.

* You stand to inherit millions of dollars from a relative you don't remember.

* You've won a prize or a lottery (perhaps one from a foreign country) that you don't remember entering.

1. You don't know the person who has sent you the message.

2. You are promised untold sums of money for little or no effort on your part.

3. You are asked to provide money up front for questionable activities, a processing fee, or to pay the cost of expediting the process.

4. You are asked to provide your bank account number or other personal financial information, even if the sender offers to deposit
money into it.

5. The request contains a sense of urgency.

6. The sender repeatedly requests confidentiality.

7. The sender offers to send you photocopies of government certificates, banking information, or other "evidence" that their activity is
legitimate (these are fake).

Online identity theft is one of the most serious threats Internet users face these days. But with the right PC security software, there shouldn't be a problem,

Aside from firewalls, anti-virus software, anti-malware and every other program designed to fight actual online contaminants, an IP changing software can prove to be vital in preserving your privacy and identity online.

Remember that computers are able to send and receive to and from each other through their IP addresses. Say, you bump into a hacker and he actually manages to obtain your IP. Now, he'll make you his target because he knows you are this IP address.

Therefore, when a person surfs the net with his IP address hidden, that means he can't possibly be a target of any hacker because he won't even be seen nor felt.

Definitely, this is the hood of an IP hider. It protects you completely.