Building up credit history takes time, persistence and responsibility but if you fail to protect those years of hard work it can only take seconds to ruin your track record. Identity theft can cause severe damage to your financial future if you fail to protect yourself properly from your personal information getting into the wrong hands.
According to reports the most common form of identity theft happens through credit card fraud. Using a credit card today is as common as owning a car which makes a large portion of the population potential victims of identify theft. What better time for hackers and potential thieves to strike than tax time.
Protect Yourself
How to protecting yourself against fraud when using your credit card today should be top on your list if you are a credit card holder. The nice thing these days is that Identity protection programs are very common given that identity theft is on the rise. Most credit card agencies offer some type of protection program that will notify the cardholder of unusual activity on their card. This is typically a benefit that most major credit cards offer to their customers. Unfortunately, this is often times not enough to keep your identity safe. The two things that can offer the best protection from identity theft is keeping track of your credit card and its use and keeping personal information secure and confidential.
Tax Day Vulnerability
Tax time creates a perfect opportunity for identity theft to occur because during the months between January and April people are pulling their confidential information together in preparation to file their annual taxes. This can also be the perfect time for consumers to do a thorough review of documents including credit card statements, receipts and other confidential documents and destroy these.
Keeping track of your forms and shredding old ones makes you less susceptible to your information being stolen or getting into the wrong hands. Throwing documents in the garbage without properly destroying the information is a recipe for disaster. Saving documents year after year can only result in clutter and disorganization causing the potential for missing or lost information. It is not necessary or safe anymore to have file cabinets full of confidential information stored just in case you need them. In fact it may be dangerous to your identity.
Awareness
The Better Business Bureau is one of the top promoters of consumer education relating to identity theft and April 17th now holds a new meaning at least according to the Better Business Bureau. Secure Your ID Day is the name given to April 17th by The Better Business Bureau (BBB). The BBB recognizes that credit card fraud is at an all time high and that tax time causes consumers and businesses to be vulnerable to predators. This effort to create an awareness of the issue of identity theft does not stop at credit cards but encourages consumers to take the opportunity to do an inventory of information that they may not need and destroy it to protect them.
Destroy that Data
The BBB has arranged for 55 locations across North American to be set up to give consumers and businesses the opportunity to go to those locations and shred their personal documents that contain sensitive information at no cost. April 15th has long been known as the annual tax day. The BBB is now coining April 17th as the day where people can clean out their closets or so to speak and bring their confidential information to be shredded in a confidential manner to protect against the threat of identify theft. The day is also seen as and a way to spark awareness about identity theft and the importance of maintaining security around sensitive information.
Unnecessary and confidential data should be shredded if it contains any or all of the following information:
• Bank account numbers.
• Social security numbers.
• Credit card numbers.
• Income information.
• Tax Identification numbers.
Identity theft can occur at any time even with the most secure of systems, hackers can and have, gained access to personal information that has devastated the lives of many unsuspecting individuals. The best prevention is to be proactive and protect your information to the best of your ability. The BBB is partnering with the country to spread the word that you can take steps to protect yourself against identity theft.
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