Identity theft and helpful hints and tips part 2

Once armed with your name, address and Social Security number, a thief can open credit card accounts in your name, buy a house, buy cars or trucks and empty your checking or savings accounts. The huge problem of identity theft and credit theft continues to grow, especially as more people are engaging in business on the World Wide Web. Internet commerce, banking and handling of mutual funds and additional investments each make opportunities for criminals to steal your vital financial information. These days, where noticing that you are a victim of identity theft can take roughly a year and clearing it up can take a couple of years, one must be suspicious when doing business on the World Wide Web.

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Below are a number of tips that will help you guard your financial information when using the Web and will protect you from becoming a victim of a financial scam.

• Never respond to unsolicited e-mail that asks for personal information. Spam messages requesting financial or personal information are usually fraudulent and are known as "phishing" expeditions.
• Although it is commonly suggested that you use a combination of letters and numbers, such as abc3de4fg, to make a secure password, it is much safer and easier to just to use something longer. Any password that is more than ten characters long will help guard you on the Web. A secure password does not use names of children and no birth dates or phone numbers. Use secure, hard to crack passwords.

• A firewall, either a software or hardware version, will protect your PC from being controlled by a stranger without your knowledge. Get a good firewall and antivirus software. Experienced computer thieves can actually steal information from your computer system if it isn't correctly protected. If you have cable or DSL access to the World Wide Web, you likely already have a firewall, but it may be set for limited protection by default.
• Check the privacy policy of the sites that you visit often to make sure that they will not disclose, share or sell your personal data.
• Never use a public computer, such as one at a library, to access your bank or credit union Websites. Your username or password may be cached on a public computer, letting any individual who uses the Web browser after you to access the Website.
• You would be astonished at the power of spam; one of the reasons people send spam in the first place is because it works. Spam may get results, but that doesn't mean that you should reply to it. Pay no attention to spam, and get a high quality spam filter so that you don't have to see it at all. Who would do business with someone who sends them unsolicited e-mail? Don't do business with anyone that solicits your business from spam e-mail or a popup window that you come across while Web surfing.

The crooks who would like to steal your personal information are pretty smart and always coming up with better ways to acquire things, so you must stay watchful. By heeding this simple advice, you should be able to safeguard yourself from a great deal of online fraud. A little bit of alertness can go a long way towards safeguarding you from financial harm.