Safe Shopping Online Can Help Avoid Identity Theft!

Online Shopping offers great benefits for its users that are not available in a regular brick and mortar establishment. Along with these benefits of 24/7 shopping from any computer and countless e-only deals comes numerous risks. Identity theft is a real risk while shopping online that cannot be overlooked.

ID theft in the internet age has changed the ways that thieves steal your information. Nowadays it is much easier for criminals to get your important info that will compromise your identity. Over 70% of ID theft is committed on the internet. But how are these people getting important numbers like bank accounts and credit card numbers right off of your home computer? There are a few ways that scammers take advantage of the internet:

1. Computer Viruses harvest your information when you shop online!
2. Hackers get into accounts online and steal your accounts and numbers.
3. Fake sites ask for personal information from you and record it for later use.

The #1 way that scammers acquire information used to steal ID’s is through computer viruses. These computer viruses will run on your computer, unknowingly to you, and record your keystrokes when you are entering anything into a website. That means that they will record all of your account usernames, passwords, or important numbers will be recorded by a bot and then sent off through a ping on the internet for someone to either sell or use.

How do I know if I have a computer Virus installed on my PC?

There is only one way to know for sure, and that is to scan your computer with a top level anti-spyware/virus software. These types of programs are built to help you manage your pc security online proactively by running automatic scans and keeping an up to date database of threats to remove.

The best thing about a program like this is that you should never have to worry about a virus again once you have installed and set it up. Spyware Doctor is very highly rated amongst tech professionals. Here is a Spyware Doctor Review for some more info.

Tips for Safe Shopping online:

1. Install a good antispyware/virus program like Spyware Doctor and remove any viruses     or worms
2. Check for a padlock in your browser when you get to a screen that requires your             information
3. Use a credit card instead of a debit card for online shopping, they have better fraud protection
4. If a site doesn’t seem reputable, don’t buy anything. There are lots of places to shop on the internet, it is best to stick to the sites that you know are legitimate.

What Is ID Theft? The Crime Defined…

There are many different definitions of the term ID theft that vary from different sources like dictionaries and Wikipedia. The FTC, or Federal Trade Commission, has a whole section of their site dedicated to the Identity Theft Crime. Here is a snippet off of their site:

-

“Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information, like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.”

For more information visit the FTC site Here

The FTC has had to pay more and more attention to the matter of ID theft in the past few years due to the catastrophic rise in numbers of US citizens that have been affected by these crimes. The affects of these criminal actions have been hard to remove for many of the government agencies that monitor these actions. In some cases identity theft victims can be affected for years and have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to recapture their credit and good name.

70% of Identity theft in recent years has been committed online, due to the huge increase in the number of online shoppers and viruses. To learn how to shop online without worry of stolen credit card numbers please read our article:

Prevent ID theft by safely shopping online!

Some Scary Facts About Identity Theft

• The Federal Trade Commison has estimated that over 10 million people in America alone have have had some part of their identities stolen in the past year.
• Theives that attain the right information about you are able to open credit accounts, rent houses or apartments, buy cars, and run up telephone bills on your credit and default on all payments.
• Almost all people that do not have a third party service monitoring their credit will not know that their identity has been stolen until there is considerable debt to deal with.
• ID Theft Sucks To Deal With. Some people will be able to take care of problems quickely, but most have to go through months or years of rebuilding horrible credit records.
• Due to bad credit scores some victims can lose out on job opportunities, or have education, housing, or car loans rejected.
• Some people have been targeted before they are 18 and have horrible credit before they have a chance to ruin it themselves!

Clearly now is the time to be proactive about your Identity and the protection that it deserves. Only you can make sure that you are doing the right things to prevent yourself from becoming a victim. Recently a few companies have created a service that will actively monitor your credit for you to make the process automated for yourself, with many offering up to 1,000,000 dollars of insurance for losses that happened due to ID theft.

We have compiled a list of 4 of these companies that we believe to offer valuable and affordable services:

See the top 4 companies features and pricing side by side here.

For more information we recommend our other featured posts: