Don’t let Identity Thieves catch you out

It is important to be vigilant against opportunistic identity thieves that take advantage of the times you let your guard down in order to gain access to important personal information that they can then use to carry out a number of unlawful activities.

Mail Interception

Keep a very close eye on your mail and make sure you have received every bill, statement and invoice you are expecting each month.  If anything goes astray chase it up from the provider, and whilst you are on the phone double check that no one has tried to change the address on your account recently – identity thieves can often use those tear off address change strips on the bottom of bills and statements in order to redirect all of your account correspondence to them in the future.  If you lived in shared accommodation where the mail is delivered to a central place you will need to extra vigilant with your post as it is more vulnerable to being tampered with, and if you are expecting any important mail such as new credit cards or checkbooks, it might be best to have these delivered in your local branch and them pick them up in person.

Telephone and Junk Mail Scams

Be cautious when receiving unsolicited requests for information – id theft protection system – either by telephone or mail, as these can often be scams that are designed to trick you into revealing sensitive personal data to thieves and fraudsters.  Banks and other financial providers would never contact you and ask you to confirm your account details over the phone as this is not a secure policy, so be very wary of any requests like this and double check the authenticity of the caller before giving out these sorts of details.

Email Scams

Email scams are prevalent simply because this is a very cheap medium through which thieves can contact thousands of people easily all around the world, and there are some very convincingly scam emails around that either try and trick you into replying with personal information (such as pretending to be from your bank or credit card provider) or they try and trick you into logging onto a fake website through a link in the email that may be loaded with malware.