Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Identity Theft Protection: Easily Protect Your Good Name

By Harvey Warmuth

With over 79 million cases of identity theft in the last year, it is one of the most rapid growing crimes in the US. Identity theft costs consumers billions of dollars each year, and is very expensive to the individual that becomes a victim of this crime.

Often thought as an individual person's problem, identity theft actually affects all of us as a whole. Even if you are not a direct victim of identity theft, you still are impacted. Identity theft is a consumer fraud crime and occurs when someone steals all, or a portion of someone's identity for financial gain.

By stealing personal information such as Social Security Cards, bank accounts, credit card numbers, etc., an identity thief will attempt to open up accounts in your name for their use, or steal money directly from your bank accounts and credit cards. The ultimate goal of identity theft is to financially enrich the thief at the expense of consumers.

Identity theft is a relatively new problem, and there are many ways one can fall prey to this crime. If you are not careful with how you handle sensitive personal data, it can be used to aid someone in stealing your identity. And if you are not careful with your online activities, including emails that you open and read, criminals can gain access to your banking, and other personal information, to commit identity theft.

There are companies that offer identity protection solutions which compliment the steps that you should be personally taking to secure your identity. Due to the fact that the crime of identity theft is on the rise, you need to take some serious measures in the fight against identity theft. One of the best steps to take is to make use of one of these identity theft services.

Placing a fraud alert with all three of the major credit bureaus is the best thing you can do in your fight against identity theft. You can manually place an alert on your account, but it has to be renewed every 90 days, which can be tedious. To automate this, you can use an identity theft protection company, which will place these alerts on your accounts for you, saving you a lot of time and grief.

Identity theft protection is becoming more and more important, as identity theft itself becomes a bigger and bigger issue. Identity theft protection services are rapidly becoming the number one way to protect yourself against identity theft.

An identity theft protection solution not only guards against identity theft, but will help you recover if you do become a victim of identity theft. Every passing day increases your chance of having your identity stolen, so you need to be doing all that you can to protect your identity.

Identity theft is the fastest-growing white-collar crime in the US, and it often has devastating effects on those that become its victim. Take the necessary steps today to ensure that you do not become identity thefts next victim.

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