How to Safeguard Your Identity From Thieves

There was a time when you only had to worry about as far as identity protection was some ne’er do well stealing your ID and claiming it as their own long enough to empty your accounts into theirs. Now we have to worry about potential significant others leafing through them before they get to know us better? Hell, the first date could be over before the first course of a meal! With protecting your identity on your mind, here’s a list of steps you can take to insure your identity makes it past first base: • Clean out your wallet. Try to carry only one credit card, and leave your Social Security card at home. • Don’t carry any pay stubs, shred your receipts when you’re done with them, and obviously don’t write your PIN number on a cocktail napkin and forget about it. • Reduce your paper bills and switch to banking and bill-paying online. Doing so will result in your statements being sent to your email. • Review your credit and bank statements every month – if anything on them looks off, contact your provider. • Always require photo ID verification. Write “See Photo ID” on the back of all your cards to make sure anyone who wants to swipe your card makes sure it belongs only to you. • Shred all credit card offers, bank statements, and anything with your personal information listed on it. • Check into software to set up firewalls and run checks every couple of weeks for spyware and viruses. • Be very wary of where you shop online. If a site looks particularly suspicious in any way, it’s probably best to find what you’re looking for elsewhere. • Don’t leave your credit card information online, even on sites you may frequently shop at, like Amazon or Best Buy. You’re better off taking the extra couple of seconds to enter your card numbers in from scratch whenever you wanna buy something. • Limit access to your computer. Put passwords on every one of your accounts, and keep them to yourself.rnKeep these tips in mind and you’ll not only have gone a long way towards protecting your wallet, and even perhaps, scoring your way towards home plate.