Identity Theft Prevention Tool Box

Freeze Your Credit | Identity Surveillance | Lock it Up in a Fire Safe

Opt-out of Junk Mail | Protect Your PC & Network from ID Theft

Order Your Free Credit Report | Read The Identity Blog

Shred Correctly | Bank Online | Data Breach Preparation

FYI: I make no money when you purchase/use the tools listed above. I do, however, benefit directly from the products/services listed below.

Hire John to Speak | Bulk Discounts on Stolen Lives | Buy DVD Video of Speech

Schedule a Business Privacy Audit | Schedule an IT Audit | Employee Training

Freeze Your Credit  

Freezing your credit is the number one way to protect your financial identity from theft. Had I frozen my credit, neither of my cases of identity theft would have happened and I wouldn't be an identity theft speaker today. A woman wouldn't have used my name and credit to buy a home in Ohio and my business partner wouldn't have used my name to commit $300,000 worth of crimes that nearly landed me in jail.

A credit freeze is simply an agreement you make with the three main credit reporting bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) that they won't allow new accounts (credit card, banking, brokerage, loans, rental agreements, etc.) to be attached to your name/social security number unless you contact the credit bureau, give them a password and allow them to unfreeze or thaw your account for a short period of time. Yes, freezing your credit takes a bit of time (maybe an hour of work), can be a little inconvenient when you want to set up a new account (that said, let's face it, businesses want to make it as easy as possible to unfreeze your credit because they benefit when you set up new accounts and spend more money) and it can cost a few dollars (generally about $10 to unfreeze, a small price compared to the recovery costs of identity theft). And it is worth it! It's like putting locks on your doors.

There are two ways to freeze your credit. Most states have passed laws that allow you to freeze your credit. They generally keep the fees and procedures for filing reasonable. Here is a list of states with credit freeze laws.

Since all states don't allow you, by law, to freeze your credit, the three credit reporting bureaus have begun to offer credit freezes on a national basis. This is a major step forward in the prevention of identity theft, even if they are offering it for profit reasons (they make money every time you freeze/unfreeze your credit). If your state does not currently offer credit freezes by law, you can now apply with each credit reporting bureau individually. Visit their credit freeze sites here: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion.

Back To Top

Deploy Identity Surveillance

When my audiences learn that only about 25% of identity theft can be caught by monitoring their credit report, they often ask me to evaluate the more sophisticated identity theft monitoring and protection services in the market place. Most of these services simply provide you with tools you can access for free and with little effort. In addition, most of them only protect you from credit fraud, ignoring the 75% of identity theft that has nothing to do with credit. LifeLock, for example, gives you no real benefit over the free steps listed on this page: Opting Out, Freezing Your Credit and Obtaining Your Free Credit Report (except for identity theft insurance, which you can add inexpensively on your homeowner's policy).

That said, I do use an identity monitoring service because it gives me the ability to detect identity theft across multiple sources, including, but not limited to, credit fraud. In other words, it allows me to fiercely and aggressively monitor my digital identity for a very small investment.

Here's a bit of background. Traditional credit monitoring (like those offered by Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, LifeLock, most banks and credit card companies, etc.) only detects a portion of identity theft (identity theft that affects your credit report makes up only about 25% of all identity theft). The remaining theft happens on non-credit loan activities (pay-day loans, etc), as part of public records (court cases, real estate transactions, government filings, etc.), over the internet (bought and sold on identity-for-sale sites), or in relation to medical or criminal records (when someone uses your identity to pay for medical procedures or to commit a crime - as happened in my case). It is important to monitor these forms of potential identity theft as well as your credit file.

The service I use is called CSIdentity (in fact, I endorse their product publicly even though I don't make a dime if you sign up for their service). I first learned about it when a credit union I do business with made it available to members. I subsequently researched the company (and many others) to verify their integrity and security. CSIdentity receives a gold star on both accounts.

Here's how it works. Rather than waste hours monitoring all of the different potential sources of identity theft myself, the product does it for me, automatically. In addition to 24/7 credit monitoring, pay-day loan fraud, public record monitoring and theft insurance and restoration services, their CyberAgent technology monitors the internet for instances of my identity being bought and sold online. Every month, a report shows up in my email inbox letting me know if there are any areas that I should be concerned about. I recently received an email from CSIdentity alerting me to the fact that new checks had been ordered in my name by my first identity thief (Rosemary - yes, a woman). I would have never caught the recurrence if I had been only monitoring my credit. THAT'S WHY I LOVE THIS PRODUCT.

If you decide to try it out, make sure you enter their promotion code CSIDfriend as you are paying (cap-sensitive – this gives you a 20% discount) and purchase it for an entire year (which gives an additional discount). By using these two discounts together, you save $52 per year. Your monthly cost comes out to about $9 per month. Not bad for credit monitoring, non-credit loan monitoring, public records and internet monitoring, as well as recovery services and $25,000 of ID theft insurance. To learn more, visit www.CSIdentity.com .

Back To Top

Use a Fire Safe

A majority of our most valuable identity documents (passports, birth and death certificates, wills, trusts, deeds, brokerage information, passwords, health records, etc.) are exposed to identity theft (and natural disasters, such as fire and floods) as they sit in unlocked filing cabinets, bankers boxes in the basement, office drawers or out in the open, on our desks. I spend an entire chapter (Chapter 7 in Stolen Lives) talking about which documents to lock up, which to destroy and which to stop at the source. To complicate matters, the problem of data theft goes beyond paper documents to digital media. More than ever we need to be concerned with the physical protection of hard drives, cell phones, thumb drives, CDs and DVDs with sensitive personal or business data on them.

The answer is to purchase a fire-resistant (and possibly flood resistant) safe that will allow for the protection of your physical identity assets. These safes come in all sizes and shapes. Some are meant for the home and some are meant for businesses. I use a SentrySafe in both my home and my business (and I don't make any money if you buy this particular brand - I recommend SentrySafe because they are indestructible, inexpensive and easy to find).

Think of it this way. Your identity is probably worth something close to $300,000 (even if your credit is poor), not to mention the value of the data (customer records, employee information, intellectual capital) you house in your business. Spending a few hundred dollars to lock up the keys to your identity is absolutely a no-brainer.

Here are several of the recommendations I cover in the book:

• Able to withstand 1500° F for 30 minutes
• Lockable by key or combination
• Heavy enough to discourage theft or be secured to the ground
• Preferably waterproof (where there's fire, there's water)

At home, I prefer to use the SentrySafe stackable filing cabinets because they allow me to expand my storage capacity as I protect more and more of my identity (I now store bank and brokerage, mortgage and phone documents in a fire safe, as one of the top forms of identity theft is committed by the people who clean, paint and visit our homes). In the office, I utilize the larger fire-resistant filing cabinets as well as a more traditional commercial safe (for valuables, photos, cash on hand, as well as important business identity assets like articles of incorporation, tax documents, etc.). I hope that someday Sentry invents a safe that will protect my CD-ROMs, DVDs, tape backups, and digital assets.

Back To Top

Opt out of Financial Junk Mail

You already understand that your private information is worth a great deal of money. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be at this site. There are complete industries built around collecting, massaging and selling your data – your name, phone number, address, spending patterns, net worth, the age of your children, the magazines you buy, etc. Companies buy bits of your privacy so that they can knowledgeably market products to you that you are likely to purchase. When you purchase a new home, for example, your information is commonly sold to businesses interested in selling you insurance, alarm systems and household goods. But that same information can be used to steal your identity. The more you share your personal data and the more you allow that information to be transferred between companies, the higher your risk of identity theft.

To minimize the amount of your personal information bought and sold on the data market, begin “opting out”.  Opting out is the process of notifying organizations that collect your personal information to stop sharing it with other organizations.

“Pre-Approved” credit card offers (i.e., junk mail) are a major source of identity theft. Those mailers give thieves an easy way to set up credit card accounts in your name without your consent. They spend money on the card and default on the balance, leaving you with the mess of proving that you didn’t make the purchases. The solution is to opt out of receiving pre-approved credit, home loan and insurance offers.

Once you’ve completed this step, begin opting out of ALL information sharing on every account you have (bank, brokerage, mortgage, utilities, phone, etc.) as well as with the Direct Marketing Association. For details, please refer to Chapter 5 of Stolen Lives.

Back To Top

7 Steps to a System Lockdown

In order to protect all of the identity documents stored on our home and work computers, and in order to use your computer in the fight against identity theft, you must first protect your computer and network. The 7 Steps to a System Lockdown are:

1. Create Strong Passwords. Chapter 7 of Stolen Lives tells you how.
2. Employ anti-virus and anti-spyware software (Consumer Reports recommends TrendMicro)
3. Configure your system for automatic security updates,
4. Utilize a hardware or software firewall and encryption software (for serious protection) and physically lock your computer (especially if it is a laptop or hand-held).
5. Secure your wireless network. Make sure that the connection is not open to anyone with a wireless device and that you use WPA encryption, NOT WEP.
6. Secure your Mobile Data Devices (BlackBerrys, Treos, Palms, Thumb Drives, Laptop Computers)
7. Hire a professional. If you have a $10,000 computer budget, spend 80% ($8,000) on hardware (PCs, monitors, etc.) and 20% ($2,000) on a technical expert to configure the computers and your network in a safe manner. Buying computers without paying to configure them securely is like buying a house and refusing to pay the locksmith to put locks on the door.

Back To Top

Order your Free Credit Report to monitor account fraud.

You are entitled to 3 free copies of your credit report every year (one from each Credit Bureau) when you visit www.AnnualCreditReport.com. I recommend that you order one copy of the report every 3 months (e.g., order the Experian report in January, the Equifax report in April and the TransUnion report in September - this gives you a look at your credit over the entire year instead of all at once). Consult Chapter 10 and Appendix B in Stolen Lives to learn how to read your credit report and use it to BLOCK the worst forms of theft.

Back To Top

Chop it! Shred documents correctly and avoid dumpster divers.

Assume that any document you throw out will end up in the hands of an identity thief. Get in the habit of either chopping or locking documents and disks that contain identity (name, phone number, address, social security number, account numbers, client information, children’s information, etc.). STOP throwing sensitive documents in the trash without CHOPPING or shredding them (junk mail, bank statements, invoices, etc.).

When buying a paper shredder, I recommend the following features:

• Cross-cut confetti shredding
• 5+ pages of simultaneous feeding capacity
• Allows shredding of stapled documents, credit cards and CDs
  

I think that the best shredders are the Fellowes Powershred line with Safe Sense Technology . I like them because the Safe Sense technology turns the shredder off if your fingers (or your kids' fingers) get too close to the shredding device. This adds a great deal of peace-of-mind to an already effective product.

Place a confetti shredder next to the places that you handle identity (where you open your mail, your home office, your desk at work) and shred everything possible. If it has identity on it, shred it, even if it isn't your information. Don’t forget to destroy digital files as well, like those that live on a hard disk when you donate your computer. Make shredding the rule, and throwing it away, the exception.

To learn about which documents to shred, and which to lock up, review Chapter 7 in your copy of Stolen Lives.

Back To Top

Bank Online and use your PC in the fight against identity theft.

Once you have adequately protected your computer (see above), begin to use it as a tool in the fight against identity theft. For example, begin to bank online. Move your banking and brokerage account access online, along with other financial accounts (mortgages, utilities, loans, etc.). As long as your computer is protected, banking online, paying bills online, reading statements online and storing sensitive documents on your computer is an excellent way to lower your risk of identity theft. It STOPS sensitive documents from being stolen out of the mail, off of your desk and out of your filing cabinet and LOCKS them behind a password-protected computer. Online account access speeds detection of fraud and drastically lower your out-of-pocket costs.

In addition, sign up for online account alerts with your bank and credit card company so that you are notified immediately by email or SMS text (on your cell phone) anytime a purchase is made on your account. It takes 5 seconds to look at an email and verify that you actually spent the money that it says you did.

Finally, consider moving your brokerage account to a firm that provides an extra layer of security when banking online. I use E*Trade because they provide a Digital Security ID to make login to your account virtually impossible if you don't have the key chain device. Remember, when you lose money from a bank account or credit card to identity theft, you can usually get the money back. When you lose the funds in a brokerage account, there are no guarantees.

Back To Top

Data Breach preparation and Privacy Audits.

Preventing a data breach in your organization is the easiet way to survive this rapidly growing phenomenon. Prevention is inexpensive compared to recovery. Too many companies wait until a data breach has happened (TJX, Bank of America, ChoicePoint and thousands of others) before they pay attention to protecting their customers' data, employee records and intellectual capital. Some esitmates put TJX's costs (TJX is the parent company of TJ Maxx and Marshalls) at $500 million, excluding the hit their stock has taken and the credibility the've lost for losing 45 million customer identities.

The first step in protecting your organization is to make your employees, executives and members aware at a personal level of the risks of information theft. If they don't understand the value of their own personal data, how will they ever recognize the value of the personal data they handle every day at work? Most companies who hire me to speak do so because they want to raise the awareness within their organization about the importance of privacy. By beginning at the personal level, this gives staff a context for protecting company information.

If you are interested in bringing me in to speak, train your employees or perform a privacy audit of your personal information, please contact me directly on 800.258.8076 or by filling out our contact form.

Back To Top

Bulk Discounts on Stolen Lives.

If you are interested in buying bulk copies of Stolen Lives: Identity Theft Prevention Made Simple as premiums for your customers, gifts for your employees or take-aways for your audience, please contact us directly on 800.258.8076 or by filling out our contact form.