Five Great Tips To Protect Your Identity
Technology and Art of Selling | 8:33 am Wednesday, Mar 25 2009 |
Nilus Mattive posted a great article today on Money and Markets about another silent threat to your wealth — identify theft.
Even though the fifth tip is more US-specific, you might want to check out what credit reports you can find and check in your country. I must check with a friend in the business, but from what I know here in Australia is that when you request a credit check/report, it goes on your report that a check was made, and that can impact the decision of some lenders. Will find out more and report back!
For the third tip about being wary of emails, I’d also suggest that tip equally applies to the telephone.
Many companies call these days and want to check your personal details, or solicit phone based donations. Quite often they do that from a number that comes up in the Caller ID as “Private” — there’s no way I’ll hand over that information to someone on the phone. They could be anyone, pretending to be someone else — just like phishing emails.
I’ll only give out that data when I ring them — on a number I can verify elsewhere.
A not so smart example the other day: a security company called (cold calling), asking on the phone about our security system. Surely they were kidding! As if I’m going to tell that to someone on the phone that I don’t know! Being in the security business, they should know a whole lot better about protecting information … yet their cold calling technique to me was abysmal. And it would be very easy to change their phone script to make their calls much more productive.
Anyway … I digress. There are two startling figures in the article … the rise in crimes last year (22 percent) and also that 10 percent of victims knew their attackers.
A good reminder to be vigilant.