Being one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States, people are searching out new ways to protect their identities from potential thieves. Identity theft is when a person obtains crucial bits of information about your identity with the intent to use the good credit standing of the victim, and even access their bank accounts to steal money. Information commonly stolen to commit identity theft include:

1. social security number
2. birthday
3. driver’s license number
4. credit card information
5. bank account information

Identity thieves often leave their victims with high amounts of debt, and ruined credit history. In more extreme cases, identity thieves can leave their victims bankrupt. Statistics have shown that there are over 500,000 new victims of identity theft annually.

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of identity theft, but one of the main causes is how easy it is for the identity thief to commit the crime. The most difficult part of the crime is obtaining information about their potential victim, and that task is not very hard. Thieves will obtain this information in many ways including:

1. rummaging through garbage
2. steal mail
3. internet hacking
4. trick the victim into giving them the information on their own

When an identity thief knows what he or she is doing, it will generally not take them a long period of time to do extensive financial damage, and huge credit damage, to their victim. During the time period of a typical billing cycle, an identity thief can easily wipe out all the money in their victim’s bank account, they have plenty of time spend the victim’s credit cards to their limits, and in doing so, they can ruin their victim’s individual credit report. It can sometimes take a lifetime for a victim to overcome the damage of an identity thief.

Taking steps to protect yourself against potential identity theft is essential. The following include some of the things you can do to help protect yourself against identity theft:

1. shred paper billing statements before discarding
2. shred credit card statements you no longer need
3. shred any document containing personal information before discarding
4. beware of telephone solicitors
5. send outgoing mail from public mail drop boxes
6. regularly run updated virus scans on your computer

By: Sheila King-Jeffcoat