There’s rarely any direct violence involved, but the idea that someone can take money, assets, or your personal information from someplace you thought secure—it’s stressful to consider. However, there are clear ways to protect yourself! One of the most important strategies is understanding what identity theft is, what the common types are, and how to prevent them.

Financial Identity Theft

Though the primary goal of most types of identity theft are for financial gain for the offender, financial identity theft remains a specific subset-type of identity theft. Anything under the term “financial identity theft” refers to identity theft that results in immediate or direct financial gain. These include:

Social Security Number theft

The most important defense against financial identity theft is properly disposing of sensitive items. This means shredding – not just throwing away – any documents that carry sensitive information on them. To detect financial identity theft, it’s a good practice to keep an eye on your bank account and credit card reports. See charges you don’t recognize? Investigate them!

Tax Identity Theft

Tax identity theft is a type of financial identity theft where the fraudster has used your Social Security Number in order to file for a tax return under your name. As you might expect, this can be extremely damaging to you – even beyond losing your return. To prevent this, shred all unimportant tax-related information, keep your social security card at home in a safe and secure location, and be sure to use strong passwords for any internet-related tax filing.

Medical Identity Theft

With medical identity theft, the fraudster has gotten hold of either your personal medical information or information that will allow them to seek medical care under your insurance or billing. Keep an eye out for any bills that don’t pertain to services or treatments you’ve personally undergone. Any indication of you having a condition that you don’t actually have is also another red flag to watch out for. A good plan is to seek an accounting of disclosures—the list of all entities your medical facility has sent your information to.

Online Identity Theft

Online identity theft has become an epidemic, and has jumped up to the most common forms of identity theft. Through pharming and phishing, thieves don’t even need to leave the safety of their home to crack hundreds of bank accounts. Keep safe and smart online, primarily by doing these things:

Use strong passwords. No important dates, no family names, no pet names. Your password, ideally, should be a unique collection of numbers, letters, and symbols equaling to a minimum of ten characters. A mix of upper case and lower case letters and special characters is worthwhile as well.

Use official websites only. If you find a shopping site that is unsecure, don’t use it. You can tell if a site is secure by looking at the URL. If you see “https,” you’re good. If you see “http” instead, the site is not secure.

Avoid public wi-fi when possible. Public wi-fi is convenient, useful, and all over the place. But if you do use it, be sure it’s from a known source, and be sure to have firewalls and blockers enabled.

Another important step is to wipe all information from discarded devices. If you’re getting rid of an old phone or PC, it needs to be wiped. Not just destroyed, but wiped clean. It’s extremely easy to lift information from a dormant drive.

For further information on identity theft we recommend brushing up here. Know what to look for, and how to prevent it in order to be certain that you remain safe!

Types of Identity Theft