August 2024: Protecting yourself from Identity Theft

 

This is our first 'security tip of the month' for the Fall 2024 semester.  In this we're talking about protecting yourself from identity theft.  This is timely since many of you have heard about a recent data breach of a background check company.  The claim is that billions of people were impacted, many of whom are Americans with social security numbers in the leaked data.

 

For more information on this breach, please see the following:

The sad reality is though that many of us have been part of past data breaches, and those are just getting worse in both size and frequency.  One of the most common things that criminals will do following a data breach is use the information in that breach to open fraudulent credit/bank accounts with the stolen information.


There are two ways you can help protect yourself from these seemingly endless data breaches.

 

Reviewing your credit report

The federal government requires the credit reporting bureaus to provide each person free access to their credit reports on an annual basis.  The website setup for this is: www.annualcreditreport.com.  Once there, click "Request your free credit reports" and follow the instructions there.

 

Knowing what is on your credit report, especially if there is anything inaccurate, can help save you a LOT of trouble in the future (when getting a mortgage, car loan, credit card, or other forms of credit).

 

Freezing your credit

What is freezing your credit?  It prevents credit reporting agencies from sharing your credit report with third parties.  This will keep creditors from approving new credit accounts in your name fraudulent or legitimate.  This does mean that if you need to apply for credit (for a mortgage, car loan, credit card, etc.) then you will have to unfreeze it temporarily.

 

I recommend reviewing the article below.  It talks about why to freeze your credit reports, and how to do so:

 

My hope is that no one receiving this ever has to worry about identity theft.  That being said, being prepared and freezing your credit, as well as monitoring it, well prevent many of the worst issues caused by identity theft.