Are You Going To Be A Victim of Fraud?

It’s said that everyone will be a victim of fraud at least once it their lifetime.  Yikes!

What steps are you taking to protect yourself?  While you can’t protect yourself 100%, you can take steps to lessen your chances or to catch it as fast as possible.  Don’t be an easy target.

Here are a few tips that we do in our household:

First, your mailbox.  Is your mail sitting in there all day or longer?  Do you put your outgoing mail in there with the flag up for?  All of these are easy targets to get your personal information.  In our house, we take all outgoing mail to the Post Office.  We pick up our incoming mail daily.  Less time for someone to take our bank or credit card statement with our information.

Next is your car.  Yes, you know your should lock it, but do you?  If you do, what are you leaving inside your car?  I just watched a video of people going to the gym and not carrying anything.  To me, that means they left their purse / wallet in their car.  Depending on the location, this can be an easy target for theft.  Are you shopping and putting your packages in the car and going to another store? Leaving your car unlocked or the window partial open can give someone easy access to your belongings.

What about your home?  Do you lock your home?  What do you toss out / recycle?  Think about your documents – can someone steal your identity by taking your trash.  We shred everything and you should too.  We also installed cameras to monitor our home.  What about your computer / cell phones?  What activities are you doing on them?  Are you always connected to a secure network?  Never do tasks such as viewing or paying bills when you are on pubic wifi.  Set up two factor authentication for your accounts.  Do each of your online accounts have there own user ID and password?  When was the last time you changed your passwords?  Monitor your bank and credit card accounts at least weekly to look for suspicious activity.  Monitor your credit report / score to anything suspicious.  Remember, the sooner you catch it, the less they can take.

To monitor your credit report, sign up for my newsletter at www.JillRussoFoster.com.  In addition to the newsletter, subscribers will be given a reminder email to view their credit report three times per year for free and it won’t hurt your credit score.