15 ways to prevent Travel related Identity Theft b4in.org/c6zO See if you’ve been employing the safeguards below to protect your identity while traveling. #1 Put snail mail on hold. Crooks love to scavenge through overflowing mail boxes to seek out personal information to steal an identity. Prevent this by arranging the postal service to put a stop on your mail. #2 Clean up, thin out. It’s been said that the laws of physics are defied when a woman empties her purse. Before traveling, dump out anything and everything: drug prescriptions, old memos, business cards, even expired documents. A thief could use this information to steal your identity. #3 Be cautious with public computers. A public computer is a very fertile area for identity theft, and this includes the computer in your hotel’s lobby. Never save passwords or use the auto-save function for forms. When you’re done, delete the search history. Never visit your financial institutions’ sites either. #4 Wireless means watch out. Free public Wi-Fi means anyone can snatch your personal information out of the air because this kind of Wi-Fi does not include encryption (which scrambles data). Use Hotspot Shield on your PC, Mac, tablet and mobile to encrypt your wireless communications. The ability to snag your private information requires only a basic knowledge of computers plus a simple plugin, and voila—this person can spy on your browser activities. Try to use only WEP, WPA and WPA2 networks. Otherwise, visit only secure websites (they have the “https” in their address). #5 Keep your phone number private. Other than giving it to reps for your airline and hotel reservations, keep it to yourself. If it gets out, a fraudster could use it to pull phone scams on you. #6 Protect your smartphone. If your mobile device is loaded with personal information, it should have a home-screen-locking password. This can even be a fingerprint scan, depending on the model. Androids need antivirus the same as PCs do. More b4in.org/c6zO
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 19:24:32 +0000
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