Hey, that's my identity

A fence with a hole in it is as good as no fence at all. It's only a matter of time before the goats/sheep/cows get out and the wolves/coyotes/thieves get in. It is very difficult to keep our personal information safe. There are holes in our defense every where we look. Here are a few things everyone can do to quickly shore up some of those holes and make personal information a little more secure.

1-888-5-OPTOUT 
If you have a bank account, a credit card, a car loan, a student loan, etc., you have a credit history. Your credit is being tracked by credit reporting agencies (e.g. Experian, TransUnion, Equifax). These agencies are allowed to sell your credit information, along with your address, to credit card companies and other financial institutions. That's why you get credit card offers in the mail all the time. Dumpster diving sounds funny, but it apparently happens quite a lot. If you throw your credit card offers away, someone else can find them, accept the card in your name, use a different address, and suddenly you have debt you didn't even know about. By calling 1-888-5-OPTOUT or going to www.optoutprescreen.com you can prevent the credit reporting agencies from selling your information, which will reduce the amount of junk mail you get, and reduce your risk of identity theft. For other ways to control where your personal information is and how it's used, go here.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

This act allows your bank to sell your information to whoever they want (like mortgage brokers), as long as they tell you how they will be using your information beforehand. The same act says that if you request that your information not be shared, the bank has to comply. You have to actually go to (or call) your bank and request that your information not be shared under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This is useful for the same reasons that optout is.

donotcall.gov

There are way too many ways to defraud someone over the phone to get their personal information. A few things to keep in mind when you get an unsolicited phone call are:

• Your bank will not call to get your personal information. They already have it. If your bank loses that information, you should consider going to another bank.
• Be wary of any phone call that you don't initiate. It's hard to be sure who is calling you, but you know who you called.
• Investment opportunities that require you to "act now" or you'll miss the opportunity are almost certainly fraud. Extremely high rates of return are also likely fraud. If they're making so much money, why do they need your money? Couldn't they get a loan at a much lower rate?

donotcall.gov is great because takes you off the lists of legitimate telemarketing companies for 5 years. If you get a call from a telemarketer after that, it is likely a fraud. An added bonus is you don't get phone calls from strangers during dinner.

dban.org

I was in New York last weekend, and I couldn't help myself. I had to visit the Apple Store on 5th Ave. They have done an amazing job with it; it's such a cool atmosphere, you want to buy something just to bring some of that atmosphere with you. I resisted, though. I did, however, test out the iPad, and when I opened the web browser, I saw that whoever was testing out that iPad before me had forgotten to log out of his facebook account after posting about "posting on the iPad in the Apple Store in NYC!" We have tons of our personal information on our computers, and we are too often too careless about it. One thing most of us don't realize about our computers is that deleted files are not deleted. I just took a class on how to find and recover those files, even from hard drives that have been formatted, and it's not really that hard to do. So, be careful with how you handle your personal information on your computer, and if you plan on giving your computer away, go to dban.org, download their boot disk and wipe your hard drive clean. It is military grade wiping software, and won't leave anything readable on your hard drive.

If you have any other suggestions for preventing identity theft, please leave them in the comments.

Photo Credit: geograph.org.uk