When learning how to protect your identity, one of the first things you should do is to stop carrying your (identity book or card) social security card with you at all times. An identity card (book) or social security card is the single most stressful and dangerous form of ID to lose. It can make the life of an identity thief much easier and yours so much more stressful.
Since most adults have their identity numbers memorized anyway, there really is no reason to carry all the identity cards, driver’s licenses, and credit cards with you all the time. However, our youth(younger generations) have a challenge in remembering their identity number, so they must keep them recorded somewhere safe.
In this post, I will go over other simple things you can do on a daily basis to keep your identity safe and sound. Remember, you’re not just doing it for yourself, you are doing it for all of us. Whenever someone steals an identity to make purchases, we all suffer.
Credit card companies do not take those losses lying down. Instead, they pass those losses unto us by increasing fees and interest rates, one way or another, we all pay. For that reason, we all need to step up and be careful with our personal information.
The next easiest, and most importantly, the thing you can do to protect your identity is to make sure that you do not give your sensitive personal details over the phone to strangers, and once you have printed that statement, you shred it into pieces or burn it in a safe place, or alternatively, once downloaded, you can create passwords that are difficult to crack or hack to safeguard your statements and all sensitive personal information on your computer.
It will only take a minute to shred and burn that credit card statement if printed after you’ve made a payment. It’s amazing how little information a thief needs to ruin your financial life. Why make it easy for them? Just make sure that you are vigilant with and protect all of your personal financial information including passwords.
You do not need to carry all your credit cards with you everywhere you go. As a matter of fact, you should never carry your cards with you at all, unless you are going shopping. When you are going about your day-to-day routine, stop by the ATM, get a little cash, and leave the cards at home.
That way if you lose your wallet, or it gets stolen, the only thing you are out of is a few bucks. With no identity card and no credit cards, you’ll be making it a lot harder for the thieves if they do manage to get a hold of your wallet.
Believe me, I know someone who had their identity stolen, and it was not a pretty sight. He spent months fighting to get everything straightened out and back to normal, including reporting not only the matter of his stolen identity to the Fraud Prevention Services but also to the police station to obtain a case number, because, without a case number, you are as good as dead in the water.
Your Bank needs it, and your insurance company, including your Home Affairs & Transport Department, must have that case number to process a new identity card and driver’s license respectively.
The level of stress he was under was through the roof. Not only was it the time and effort it takes to go and visit all these places, but it is also exhausting to start the process all over again while standing in endless queues.
I felt so bad for him but there really was nothing I could do to help except be his friend and let him vent about the whole situation from time to time. He did finally get everything back under control and now he uses one of those protection services to keep his information confidential. I can tell you now you do not want to experience what my friend went through.
Just finding out (research) any one of those identity protection services in your local area is a good idea if you do not think you can learn how to protect your identity sufficiently by yourself.
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