The Online Identity Theft Prevention Kit

The Online Identity Theft Prevention Kit
From the Editors of Atlantic Publishing Company

Okay, this may not seem like much of a story, but I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately about how people’s accounts were hacked and how difficult it was to get their money back.  This book is about making sure you don’t have your own tragedy. 

“There is some good news in all this: Identity thieves do not like hard targets.  The whole goal of stealing identities is to collect information as fast as possible to make as much money as possible.”

People think of identity theft as a thief stealing their social security number so that he or she can open accounts or do something in their name.  A seemingly more prevalent identity theft these days is stealing credit card or bank account information so that the thief can buy something using your money or credit.

Since more and more of our accounts are strictly or partially online, identity theft has gotten easier and more prevalent.  “If you have online accounts, these are most at risk for identity theft.  You do not even need to know a person’s name to steal this kind of money – all you need is a screen name and password.”

Most of us are far too lax in creating our online passwords and keeping our antivirus and spyware software up to date.  It's probably impossible to guard against everything but make it difficult for the thieves. The authors suggest creating a password that combines letters and numbers and ,if possible, special characters like exclamation points and asterisks.

This book covers the background of identity theft, different types and who and why they do it.  Though the title suggests it is mostly about online identity theft, it covers a great deal about offline identity theft too.

In fact, “victim information shows that over 25 percent of all identity theft victims know their attacker.”  It could be a friend, family member or co-worker.  Make sure your purses are locked up at work, ladies!  You don’t know what stresses your co-workers might be under that would make them do foolish things. 

The chapter on how identity can be stolen online is dense with information on what sensitive information thieves may be looking for online and the different ways they might go about procuring it – hacking, bots, backdoors, spyware, spam, phishing, spoofing, fake websites, common scams, and even common offline identity theft scams.

They even cover how to read your credit report, what to do if your identity has been stolen, what to do if it’s a family member who is responsible, and other resources to help you if you are a victim of identity theft.   

This book is a great resource for making yourself a harder target for identity thieves and it’s something all of us should pay attention to.