Here’s a startling stat: Nearly one in three persons surveyed by Experian believe they’re not at risk of identity theft because “thieves only want wealthy people’s identities.”
Wrong. It’s not how much money you make, but rather how much cybercrooks could make from you.
“Identity thieves use data as their commodity, selling it to the highest bidder or for personal gain, so it’s important for consumers to protect their personal information,” says Becky Frost, senior manager of consumer education for Experian’s ProtectMyID.
Put another way: My long-unemployed mother was a victim of identity theft, and another relative who is self-employed had to get a credit freeze after someone tried opening credit cards in his name.
Both cases seem to have stemmed from credit-card applications filched from mailboxes. The bigger risk these days is cybercrime, if the Experian survey is any indication.
That is to say, quite a few of us are at major risk for identity theft due to our own naivete or carelessness. For example:
- 38 percent say they close browsers without logging out of online accounts.
- 53 percent don’t check an online merchant’s security before placing orders.
- 25 percent of those who use public wi-fi regularly don’t use protection such as firewalls.
An ounce of prevention
Sound scary? Oh, it gets better:
- Almost half of millennials are okay with sharing their passwords with other people. (Hoo boy. There really is such a thing as being too nice.)
- Two-thirds of those who use public wi-fi log on to personal accounts, and 38 percent of them access either bank or credit-card accounts in this fashion.
- Thirty percent of smartphones are not password-protected, and 41 percent aren’t set up for remote tracking and wiping. (Both of these things are both easy and free.)
- Forty-two percent believe it’s “too much of a hassle” to be vigilant about securing their identities.
You know what else is a hassle? Spending months (or years) dealing with the effects of frauds perpetrated in your name.
Just ask Simon Bunch, a British man whose credit card was hacked and used to purchase child pornography. Although ultimately cleared of all wrongdoing, Bunch first had to go through losing his job and being ostracized by relatives.
The Federal Trade Commission offers step-by-step instructions on what to do in case of identity theft. But for heaven’s sake, do what you can to prevent it from happening in the first place. Someone who compromises your personal info can make your life hell for years.
Readers: Is your smartphone password-protected? What other steps do you take to keep your identity safe?
Related reading:
- How to stop getting credit card applications
- Why you can’t afford an apartment
- Got a credit card? Get another one
Thanks for the timely article, Donna. Several years ago my then-tween son’s identity was compromised. At his age the credit bureaus didn’t have files on him. It was a nightmare convincing them to post a fraud alert to ward off further nefarious activity. He’s now about to graduate from college. I need to remind him to check his credit just to make sure there’s nothing lurking that might interfere with a job application or such.
Eternal vigilance! In another article I did, I interviewed an expert who noted that only 4% of U.S. residents take advantage of their free annual credit reports.
Smartphone password protected: yes, of course
Other steps: contact Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, (I’m not sure of Innovis) most of those have freeze options. Credit cards often use either TransUnion or Experian, with what seems lately that they use Experian the most, even my electric company uses Experian. If you are applying for a credit card, you’ll be denied while the freeze is in place, but give you a period where you can call them back after you’ve temporarily removed the freeze. You can do this online. But anyone else trying to get a credit card as you, will also get denied. If there are a lot of attempts, they’ll notify you.
When you sign up for the freeze, they’ll give you a PIN. You can unfreeze for a period of time or you can give them your PIN. When applying for a job, ask if they are going to do a credit check and which agency they’re going to use, give them your PIN for that agency, so they can do their checks.
If you are very uneasy, check out LifeLock, but it is not cheap, however, how much is your identity worth? For some cases where it slips through them, they have $1 million guarantee to help you unravel what will be a long uphill battle. Then for device protection there’s LoJack.
Whatever you do, you need to do regular backups, including your phones, tablets and laptops. There are several companies that can lock and/or wipe your device. In the event you don’t get your device back, then when you get a new one, you’ll be able to restore.
Some credit cards offer identity theft protection with varying degrees of success, have you checked what protection services your credit card offers? Also, check what other things you can do. For example I have a credit card that was hacked a number of times, I had one month where I had to get like 6 cards replaced. I noticed some one was buying iTunes movies, but they were coming out of state. My children couldn’t have done that since my Apple ID password is long and complicated (I often mistype it). Credit card company contacted Apple and they confirmed not me. Asked credit card bank to deny iTunes and the could and did. If you want to buy iTunes content, other than subscriptions, you can buy with gift cards. So our kids get gift cards and they have to budget what they use them for. Not related to credit cards, buy gift cards for yourself. Then your credit card info is not constantly refreshed. For Amazon, get gift cards for yourself and delete your credit cards from your account.
When I discovered an elderly friend’s iPhone wasn’t password protected, I was horrified and insisted we take care of that immediately.
I read these stats and just can’t wrap my head around it. I can hardly bring myself to share passwords with my own spouse, and I don’t have trust issues with him. It’s just ingrained security – you DO NOT share passwords willy nilly.
So of course our phones are password protected, I check our credit reports regularly and shred anything with our names and addresses, much less any other personal information, rather than recycling. We don’t transmit credit card or other personal information on anything that’s unsecure and stopped storing credit cards on merchant servers.
Who needs the hassle of having someone luck into our personal information and go to town? Only *I* get to enjoy our great credit rating, thanks!
The other day I got one of those “you are pre-approved for a trillion dollars’ worth of credit!” come-on letters. Only it wasn’t addressed to me; somehow I’d gotten another person’s mail. Yet another reason to get yourself off those credit card come-on lists.
Definitely.
Another thing occurred to me that I do regularly: I remove myself and my family members from public info aggregation sites like Spokeo. It’s CREEPY how they cull all your information of where you’ve lived, and account security questions used by banks will actually use that same information when you try and open new accounts. There is a benefit for those family members who have really common names, it’s easy to be lost among the other 200 people with the same name, but that info can still be found and used. I search all the URL occurrences of my name/family names and send removal requests through their opt out page: http://www.spokeo.com/opt_out/new.
Thanks for this. I’ll check what they have on me and I bet some readers will, too.
er … *we* get to enjoy it …. 😉
Very timely article, Donna, especially with the Christmas shopping season upon us. I have been guilty of logging out of my browser without signing out of an account! I’ll quit doing that effective today!! Thanks, I had no idea this was risky behavior.
It can be risky if other people have access to your computer, or if you just get in the habit of doing this and are using, say, a computer at the library or in someone else’s home. It’s just something you don’t want to do.
Thank you for the reminders, Donna!
Our phones are password protected, and my husband’s lock screen is a photo of his business card, so any honest person that finds his phone can contact him.
We also shred everything with personal information on it, get our free reports from annualcreditreport.com, keep very few credit accounts, and shop infrequently at big chain stores. Oh, and I opted out of receiving pre-approved credit offers years ago.
But I know there’s still enough out there for someone who really wanted to to damage us pretty badly, so articles like this are always a good nudge to do better.
I like the idea of the lock screen being his business card. If I had a smartphone, I’d do that myself. Thanks for the suggestion.