Understanding how thieves steal your personal info- and how you can stop them!

Let’s look at how ID thieves steal your info: By understanding this you may be able to stop a criminal from victimizing you or your family members. You'll also learn simple things that you can start doing today to begin protecting your information from these criminals.

For example if I simply tell you not to put your out going mail in the blue and white US postal service drop boxes that you find on the street corners in most towns and cities you would ask why and be unimpressed and unlikely you would not follow my suggestions. But if I explain that drug enforcement officers in Colorado found a mail drop box in the living room of a “meth” house they busted you will understand that criminals – at least in Colorado and likely in other states too - are prying the bolts that hold these mail-drop boxes out of the concrete and stealing the boxes to obtain information to commit identity theft and support their drug habit. A failure to understand the risks can leave you vulnerable to some very creative identity thieves.

So, how do identity thieves steal information?
They steal outgoing mail from mail drop boxes on the street corner, from the mail box in front of your house (the red flag is a red flag to ID thieves). Out going mail may contain checks you have written or other important information that you send to your bank, insurance company, credit card companies, the IRS or your tax preparer, other government agencies...

Identity thieves steal information directly from victims by stealing their wallet, purse, computer, PDA. They may steal information out of your car including your car registration and insurance or out of your purse you left in the car because you did not want to take it inside your gym, a bar or restaurant, when you run into the stop and shop for 2 minutes…

ID thieves also steal information from a victim’s home or office. Unfortunately 16% of the time, the ID thief is a friend, associate, co-worker or family member of the victim. These people have ample opportunity to steal your information out of your home, car or office space when they are an invited guest (in your home) or legally have the right to be in your office space.

Online the hazards are many and vastly varying scams, keylogging programs and other hacking programs proliferate presenting great risks to you online. I often hear that But, even if you never go online, you still face significant risk from because most individuals actually have their information stolen in the real world

ID thieves also steal from a company that provides them services or has sold them a product, or they are tricked into revealing it themselves through some creative scam. In short the hazards abound and are all around you, which is why, In short, we are all at risk for becoming a victim of identity theft. But there are certain things that put us more at risk.

We will look closer at who the ID thieves are and what you can do to protect yourself from ID thieves or recover from ID theft if you are already a victim over the next few weeks! Visit us here each week where we analyze the problem of identity theft and help find solutions for everyone.