How I Became a Victim of Identity Theft and Tips on What to Do if You Become a Victim, Too

Identity theft is something that people never think will happen to them. I thought this way until I became a victim of identity theft. I have a shredder and use it for all mail. I shred up the mail and throw it away and thought I was safe. Most places use a common account to try and access your information. A few examples would be paypal or ebay. I recieved an email from paypal stating I had some account problems and my account was frozen. This is usally how people target their victims by using a common problem with an account. I went to the website they directed me to and gave all my information to the paypal website. Turns out the website was a fake website but looks exactly the same. The next day $10,000 was charged in an advance payday in my name in Spain. Usually this happens over seas.

You always need to shred all of your mail. Especially credit card offers. People will steal your mail and send it credit card offers in your name which they won't pay. Also make sure never to give out important information online. Make sure that the website is the correct website by looking at the url at the bottom of the page. If it isn't the same as the name of the website don't give them your information. For example if you think you are on www.paypal.com and you see it says something else on the bottom, log out. Never give your bank account information along with your pin number for any reason. I know this sounds like a no brainer but when all your income is controlled by a certain company and you need to get in, you will supply this information.

If you are a victim of identity theft you need to do many things. What information did the person get? Close any account information they have access to like debit cards, credit cards, account numbers, etc. Make sure you file a fraud alert on all three business beaureus. They will issue it to your credit file for 90 and it stays there for 7 years to be safe.