- Don’t give out your personal information on the phone to someone you have not called.
- Don’t give your personal information online to anyone you have not contacted directly, and be sure that the company with which you are dealing is legitimate.
- Check your credit report annually. It’s free. Go to https://www. annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp or call 877-322-8228.
- Don’t carry your Social Security card in your wallet.
- Don’t use your Social Security number for identification purposes unless you’re required to do so by law. Generally, you are not required to provide your Social Security number to a business unless the company is required to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service. Unfortunately, many businesses ask for your Social Security number for their own identification purposes, and there are few laws to prevent them from doing so. If a company asks for your Social Security number, don’t give it immediately. Ask the company to use an alternate number such as your driver’s license number. The Government Accountability Office (www.gao.gov) has compiled a list of state laws that limit the use of Social Security numbers. You can consult this list to learn about the rights you have in your particular home state.
- It has been against the law since December 17, 2005, for states to use your Social Security number as your driver’s license number, but many people still have older driver’s licenses that are not yet up for renewal that display their Social Security number. Ask for a new license without your Social Security number.
- Take yourself off the list to receive those nuisance preapproved credit card offers. Identity thieves retrieve these from the trash and apply for credit cards in your name. Call 888-5-OPT-OUT or go online to www.optoutprescreen.com to get your name removed from the lists used to generate preapproved credit card offers. You need to enter your name, phone number, address, and Social Security number. You can take yourself off the list for five years or permanently. I suggest permanently.
- Change your health insurance card number from your Social Security number.
- Check websites that require personal data. See if the web address bar begins with https rather than just http. The “s” means that the website is protected by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security that encrypts your data. Look for a closed padlock image in the bottom-right corner. Double-click on the padlock to check that the website’s security certificate is genuine and up-to-date. The padlock indicates that your information is being encrypted.
- Shred, shred, shred. Cross shredding is best, because some methamphetamine addict could stay up all night piecing together your vertically shredded trash to get information to be used to make you a victim of identity theft.
You can also opt for a credit freeze. You know about the pain people experience after eating ice cream or drinking a cold beverage too quickly. (If you are academically inclined, the proper name for brain freeze is Spheno Palatine Gangleoneuralgia.) However, you may not be familiar with credit freezes, which can provide you with tremendous protection from becoming a victim of identity theft.
To evaluate an application for credit, particularly for credit to buy a large ticket item, such as expensive electronic equipment or a car, the retailer looks at your credit report to determine whether you are creditworthy. A credit freeze is a lock on your credit report that prevents your credit report from being seen by anyone unless you specifi cally, through the use of a PIN, make the credit report available.
This provides a great deal of protection from identity theft, because even if an identity thief is able to get access to suffi cient personal information of yours, such as your Social Security number, he will still not be able to access your credit report without knowing your PIN.
Unfortunately, only about half of the states authorize credit freezes, and fi ve of them permit credit freezes only after you have become a victim of identity theft. The truth is, the federal government has been reluctant to pass much-needed national credit freeze legislation, largely due to the lobbying efforts of the banking and credit industry, which would rather tolerate identity theft than do anything that would slow down impulse buying.
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