Identity theft commonly begins with the loss or theft of a wallet or purse. But there are many or high-tech and low-tech ways criminals can get their hands on your personal and financial information in order to commit identity theft.
� Carry with your only the information you need. Always keep your personal information and documents in a safe and secured place of your choosing.High-Tech Techniques: Data transferred across the Internet can be intercepted during its journey.For extensive information about ways to protect your identity, visit "Protecting Your Identity" at http://www.ProtectingYourIdentity.blogspot.com/.Criminals are increasingly creative in the methods they use to get their hands or eyes on your personal information, and ultimately, your money. Here are some of the low-tech techniques they employ:� Before disclosing personal information, even to people you know where you shop or do business, insist on knowing the reason(s) your personal information is required and how it will be used.Once the user has understood what exactly are the functions of POP3 email accounts and its uses, he can choose a hosting package that offers POP3 email accounts with their respective support. It is equally advisable to first check with the web host whether these POP3 accounts are offered within the hosting package or come at an additional monthly cost. For most web masters, POP3 accounts are indispensable and therefore it becomes imperative to opt for a web hosting service that offers this feature. The company's support needs to be of high quality as well in order to ensure smooth web hosting. Any kind of laxity or errors can cost you hundreds to millions of dollars, which is highly undesirable. Some hosting packages may include "unlimited POP3 accounts" or perhaps a set number of POP3 accounts. It is advisable therefore to first determine your requirement before selecting the hosting package with its corresponding POP3 account allowance. Lap up on ample knowledge and then select a package that would befit your website requirements.� Order and review a copy of your credit report at least once a year.� Do not give your Social Security number to people or companies that you do not know.� Skimming: Thieves quickly and temporarily steal a credit card and run it through a skimmer, a credit card reader that has been reprogrammed to steal information off the card.Fight Back: Reduce the Risks� They both are open protocols, defined by Internet RFCs.� Phishing and Pharming: While phishing is a scam in which consumers are tricked into entering their personal information via a bogus email and website form, pharming occurs where hackers steal personal information from numerous people simultaneously through something known as "domain spoofing". They take over a DNS server and redirect user information to a new website that they use to gather, collect, "pharm" illegal information.A safelist is a website that provides a way for people who join to send out ads and information to each other. Many of the ads found on safelists concern ways to make money online. Safelists were created mainly in response to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which placed serious restrictions on spamming and which allows for prosecution of those individuals and companies who transgress these restrictions. Safelists are "safe" because they provide a place for people to advertise without being accused of spamming, which can get you into all sorts of trouble if enough people complain. No one who is really trying to create a business online wants to be accused of spamming.With a very catchy or striking subject line, you can still get a few people here and there to open your email, provided you send out enough of them to the safelists and at the right time of the week and day. The correct time and date are usually considered to be "secrets," but they are common sense. Weekends are usually not a good time, as people are interested not in work but in play at that time. Many people work in offices and don't want to read emails after they get home, if they even have a home computer, so there are many people reading (and deleting) their messages during lunch hour. Now, "lunch hour" varies around the world, as does the "weekend," so you will have to account for when that will occur most appropriately for your business enterprise. If you join a safelist submitter that mails to at least 1 million people, if you have a catchy subject line and a compelling body copy, and if you send out these messages - rotating your ads - at the appropriate times of day and week, you may see a satisfying amount of traffic going to your website. In this sense, it can be said that safelists do work, but that "iffy" success is only one part of the net-marketing battle!� Shred documents containing your sensitive information before discarding them.� Fully support the offline (download and delete) access model.� Guard your mail from theft. Promptly remove your incoming mail from your mailbox and place outgoing mail in locked collection boxes at your local Post Office.Thieves steal your personal information and use it to open credit accounts, bank accounts, telephone service accounts, and make major purchases in your name. These criminals use your sensitive information to take over existing accounts, or open new accounts. Their criminal activities can result in damage to your credit rating and denials to credit and job offers.� Dumpster Diving, one of the easiest ways for them to appropriate your personal information.What does work?� Create unique passwords and personal identification numbers (PINS) and avoid using easily available information such as mother's maiden name, date of birth, or last four digits of your Social Security number.� Mail Theft from unsecured residential mailboxes. According to statistics, mail theft most often takes place at unprotected and easily accessible mailboxes in public places.Safelists come in all sizes, as they can be owned or started by anyone who wants one, Some of them have thousands of members, while others have just a few. There are also services called "safelist submitters," which allow you to join and send to hundreds or thousands of safelists at once. If you are submitting to thousands of safelists, you are sending your emails to hundreds of thousands or millions of people, which sounds very exciting. Safelists have been considered for several years now to be the best place for new marketers or "newbies" to start their business. But, do they really work? For the most part, safelist marketing has become obsolete and outdated. It used to work much better, but since everyone's doing it, it doesn't work very well anymore, especially because many people now use huge mailboxes that can automatically delete all messages. In that way, people don't have to go through their mailboxes and actually look at any of the mail, which means they aren't really reading any of the messages.
For extensive information about ways to protect your identity, visit "Protecting Your Identity" at http://www.ProtectingYourIdentity.blogspot.com/.
Author: Etienne A. Gibbs
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