Zero Fraud Liability

Posted on Tuesday, 19th July 2011 by Nathan Thorpe

Current statistics indicate that about 8 million people each year fall victim to identity theft. Among the ways that people are affected are credit and financial problems, tax issues, and even legal concerns. And it’s costly and time consuming to repair the damages caused by identity theft. Instead of worrying about how to recover from identity theft, learn how to protect yourself from it.

What is Identity Theft?

Many different criminal activities are called identity theft, but they my actually be another crime. Usually, however, identity theft, identity fraud, and credit card fraud are all lumped together as identity theft. Before you can protect yourself from it, you should know what identity theft is.

How Does Identity Theft Happen?

Most people think that identity theft only happens online, but that’s about as far from the truth as you can get.

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Tags: Identity Theft, Theft
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Posted on Monday, 18th July 2011 by Nathan Thorpe

Definition:

Consumer reporting agencies collect information about consumers and sell it to other people. The most well-known are the credit reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. These are specialized consumer reports dealing exclusively with your credit, work history, and residence.

There are companies that scour public records to collect information about consumers. Companies like Acxiom and LexisNexis draw their share of fire from privacy rights advocates. They look at public records, DMV records, court records and (apparently) medical records. And since the information is available, being able to monitor it can give you a big head start against identity theft.

(Another CRA still talked about is ChoicePoint, which was purchased by the LexisNexis parent company.)

Of course, if you have always been shy about going into a database, there might not be much information about you.

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Posted on Monday, 18th July 2011 by Nate Sawers

While identity theft has been a problem for Americans for literally decades, it’s only in the last two that this crime really took off as far as it occurring over the Web. Thanks to the information superhighway, thieves can steal information from virtually anyone in the world, anywhere, at any time. Since most Americans, over 75%, have access to the Internet either at home, at work, or both, everyone needs to know a few simple rules about how to protect themselves during their online activity.

Spot phishing scams before you get hooked by reading emails with links in them carefully. If these emails have numerous spelling errors, it can be a dead giveaway. Another way to tell is to simply roll your mouse over the link so that the URL appears in your address bar. Does the address look like one for a legitimate site or does it have extraneous characters? Not sure? Delete the email. J

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Tags: Identity Theft, Web
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Posted on Sunday, 17th July 2011 by Archie Norton

Several largepanies have rolled out cloud storage products recently: Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Apps for Business (of which cloud storage is only a part), Windows Live SkyDrive, and Apple iCloud, which isn’t available until fall. On NextAdvisor, we review online backup services, some of which can also be classified as cloud storage. Let’s use SugarSync, the most cloud-like of the online backup services we review, as an example. What’s the difference? Which is best? L

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Tags: Cloud Storage, Storage
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Posted on Saturday, 16th July 2011 by Nathan Thorpe

Definition:

The theft of a child’s identity by his or her parents. Parents will sometimes steal their children’s identity to open credit card accounts, utility accounts, bank accounts, and even to take out loans or secure leases because their own credit history is insufficient or too damaged to open such accounts.

Parent/Child identity theft may occur more often than many people realize, especially in economically depressed areas. It can sometimes take 10-15 years for the crime to be discovered, and even when it is, it’s not often reported because it is a familial crime.

Also Known As: Child Identity TheftExamples: When she tried to apply for financial aid for college, Sheila discovered she was the victim of parent/child identity theft.

Tags: Identity Theft, Theft
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Posted on Friday, 15th July 2011 by Nathan Thorpe

You would think that since a business isn’t a person, identity theft would not be an issue. However businesses do have an identity, and they can be victimized by an identity thief just like a person can.

In fact a business even has its own Social Security number (called a Federal tax ID, Employer Identification Number, or EIN) that can be stolen by an identity thief, and make things miserable for a business owner. Corporate identity theft (or business identity theft)can close your businesses doors and even come back personally if your business isn’t structured properly.

The Tempting Target

There are many reasons an identity thief may choose to target a business. A larger company may have several credit cards on a single account, and not bother looking over the itemized list of charges before they pay the bill.

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