The number of threats consumers face today are astounding, what’s worse, once the scam takes place, the victim may not notice the theft until months later. So what can you do to ensure your personal information stays safe?

One of the first steps to get started is to monitor your credit report. Your personal credit files are kept by the 3 major credit bureaus in the US. The information they record include:

• The companies that granted you credit
• Third parties that have made credit inquiries about you
• Third parties that have reviewed your credit
• Payment and timeliness information (payment history)
• Past addresses for the last 10 years.
• Jobs you’ve held in the last 10 years

Guidelines for monitoring your credit:

Keeping track of your credit report and what appears on it regularly, will prove a huge benefit and a great way to stay ahead of identity thieves. Here are some guidelines to be most effective.

1. Check all 3 of your credit reports: You’ll find that there are significant gaps and differences in how your credit is seen by each of the major bureaus. A certain account might show in one but not the other, so it’s essential you compare information across all three reports.
2. Monitor your credit reports quarterly: You can check your credit free once a year, and although that’s better than nothing, it isn’t frequent enough to detect fraud and stop the damage. Checking your report once every quarter is the most ideal way to keep on top of what’s going on with your personal credit file and catch identity thieves and stop credit fraud before it becomes a bigger problem.
3. Look for suspicious activity: When reviewing your credit report you’ll notice and recognize accounts that are familiar to you, like your Visa card from Chase, or that car loan you’re still paying off. Your job is to take a close look at every single account reported on all 3 of your credit reports and find anything that looks suspicious or inconsistent when compared to your other reports. Look at inquiries made and find out who they are and why they’re inquiring about your when you have not recently applied for credit.

Keeping on top of it proactively and consistently is the most effective way to keep safe from credit fraud and other identity theft threats. However, it may seem a little inconvenient and time consuming, if this is you, consider credit monitoring services or full blown Identity Theft Protection services.

These automated systems will alert you automatically when changes to any of your credit reports occur, and depending on which service you sign up for, the coverage can be very sophisticated and certainly takes the burden of your hands.

Of the many faces identity fraud has, medical identity theft is the deadliest one. Your medical records could end up with the wrong medical history and diagnoses and these are the things that can cause serious problems for you when you do need medical care.

The majority of cases of medical fraud involve criminal rings that often work with corrupt medical staff, who even include doctors. They purposely file false claim’s with the insurance information of unsuspecting victims. Some of these rings are so well organized for this type of crime that they can even setup fake clinics. The medical billing system is complex and confusing for most people, but for medical staff that know how the system works, this is all too easy.

This type of identity fraud can be very lucrative, continuously setting up fake claims can produce millions of dollars a year and now that most medical records are electronically archived, this presents even more opportunity since now thieves can steal millions of records at once. After all the damage is done and the victim realizes that their records are wrong, they will have a very frustrating time correcting these entries, which in many cases remain on medical records permanently.

Dangers of a wrong diagnosis

If you’ve been a victim of medical identity theft, you’re immediately in danger, especially if you are not even aware that your medical records have been wrongfully altered. This could mean a life threatening diagnosis for you.

Imagine being given a medical prescription for medicine that you’re allergic to, or being denied treatment because your records show that you were already treated for a specific condition you’re now developing and the medical facility considers you a liability because of what’s on your record. What if you were told your recent xrays are keeping you from getting new xrays that you need in order to find out what’s wrong with you? What if you needed surgery and couldn’t get it because according to your medical records you’re currently recovering from a previous surgery?

These are only some of the instances in which medical identity theft can complicate and threaten your life. The consequences go on and on and even if your life is not threatened by the changes in your medical record, the financial problems you’ll face can certainly make you sick.

Medical insurance fraud costs millions of dollars every year, and if you become a liability to your medical insurance company you can also be dropped. Your medical benefits could be exhausted if someone else impersonates you and uses your information to make their claims. Insurance companies have policies for dealing with fraud and most will work with you to investigate the fraud, but if your benefits continue to be abused you could end up with no benefits.

Identity theft protection and medical fraud

Identity protection services became available as a way to combat the ongoing epidemic of identity theft crimes, which in the majority of cases still refers to credit fraud. But there are so many ways to take advantage of another person’s identity that these services make a lot of sense. Even though they have great security features to stop identity theft, their services still have not fully responded to the threat of medical identity theft. Not every identity theft protection service offers medical benefits protection and the few that do, offer only limited protection measures to prevent this threat.

For now the only company we have discovered that offers medical benefits protection is Trusted ID, the service basically includes periodically reviewing and monitoring medical services provided to the subscriber to make sure no one else other than the designated subscribers are receiving medical care.

In order to prevent medical insurance fraud and the problems it can create for subscribers, the protection offered by these companies needs to improve significantly. They can effectively stop identity theft when it comes to credit accounts and can even detect your social security number floating around black market websites on the internet, but because medical identity theft is more complex, it’s a bigger challenge to tackle it as well as credit related crimes.

In spite of these deficiencies, the services are still a great way to outsource the tasks of monitoring your identity. It’s no doubt that these services are improving and innovating to provide better protection and monitoring your medical benefits usage maybe exactly what you need to keep yourself safe from medical identity theft.

Limit the number of items you carry in your purse or wallet

Losing your wallet or your purse easily becomes an opportunity for someone to commit identify theft. It’s a bad habit to carry your social security card, your driver’s license and all of your credit cards along with receipts and notes in the same wallet. No one ever realizes how risky this is until they lose their wallets. Another unfortunate mistake people make is to have the numbers for the credit card companies written on a piece of paper that was in their wallet or purse. Identity thieves are as opportunistic as they are resourceful.

Keep bills, financial statements and other sensitive personal information locked up at home

One of the places you never think about losing your identity is in your own home. We often leave bills and bank statements laying around kitchen counters, desks etc. If you never allow anyone into your home then you’re probably ok. But if you have visitors like contractors, cleaners etc who come to work for you in your home, you need to make sure you’re not exposing your sensitive data to anyone.

Shred anything that contains your name, address and financial information

Shredding machines are rather inexpensive. To some people this may sound like a hassle but it is so important to make sure that none of your unwanted statements leave your house in one piece. Some identity thieves still resort to “dumpster-diving”, which basically means they will dig through trash, as a way to gather any information they can use. In order to minimize the amount of paper statements, you can also request from all your financial institutions that they take you off of paper statements and have your statements emailed to you instead. The same thing goes for utilities and phone services.

Do not open spam email

The reason why spam has not gone away and will probably never go away is because it is still a very popular way to market, and recipients still open these emails. Spam mail is a prime avenue for identify theft, as it often contains viruses and other malicious code that can run as a background process and gather information while you’re active online. These malicious programs are an attempt to collect personal information from unknowing internet users with the purpose of harvesting their personal identities.

Credit card skimming

Whenever you pay with your credit card make sure you keep an eye on the person running the transaction for you, this is an opportunity for someone to skim your card. Skimmers are devices about the size of a credit card that someone can swipe your card through to read your card’s information to be used later. Whenever possible pay with cash and it is always a good idea to not sign the back of your credit cards but instead write the words “please check my ID”. Credit card theft is one of the easiest to do because credit card numbers are often mishandled.

Know who is calling you or emailing you requesting your information

Phishing is still a popular way of acquiring personal identity information, whenever you receive emails that appear to be from financial or insurance companies make sure you read them carefully. If they prompt you to submit any of your information as a way to verify your account, simply delete the email. Financial institutions DO NOT request your information via emails or phone calls, they already have it. Rather than surrender this information when they call you ask questions to find out exactly who they are. Should the request sound legitimate contact the toll free number from the organization’s website and call them to verify.

Take your name off marketing lists

If you’re not aware of the national Do-not-call registry, visit their website (https://www.donotcall.gov/), this is an act that protects you from getting calls from most telemarketers.

Review your credit card statements and check your credit report often

Reviewing your credit card and bank statements can give you some early detection when you see charges that you do not recognize. You also need to check your credit report often and make sure you setup free fraud alerts. These will tell you when changes have occurred to your credit report and this is a clue to investigate what the change is, especially if you have not initiated anything.

Report suspicious activity

Should the worse happen and you fall victim of identity fraud, do not wait to contact your credit card companies or banks immediately to freeze your accounts and keep further charges from taking place. You should also report the incident with the credit bureaus and ask them to put fraud alerts on your file, and finally contact your local police department and ask them to fill out a police report on the identity theft crime that you’ve been a victim of.

Sign up for credit monitoring / identity theft protection

Although you’re able to accomplish most of what these services can do on your own, it simply is not practical enough for a single person to monitor their credit or identity 24/7. These highly specialized services make use of state of the art technology to monitor the identities of millions of subscribers and provide them with accurate and prompt alerts when suspicious activity is taking place involving their identity.

But, is credit monitoring enough to battle identity theft? Can this measure alone help you protect your identity properly? Credit monitoring services may insist that this is the best way prevent identity theft and although it is an important aspect of identity theft protection, it alone is not a comprehensive system for total protection against credit fraud or other types of identity theft.

Total Identity theft protection includes a lot more than credit monitoring, it’s safe to say that the two go hand and hand. Credit monitoring is a step within an identity theft protection plan or service, but it is not a plan by itself. Your credit report alone is not the only place where identity theft can be spotted, there are many other aspects about your identity, such as medial benefits, social security, your name and address change, online security, your mail etc. Identity theft can strike at any one of these fronts.

Disadvantages of credit monitoring?

Credit monitoring may cost you an average of $200 to $400 a year, for a service that will essentially track changes to your credit reports and detect credit fraud or the potential of it. Monitoring your own credit is something you can do on your own by placing fraud alerts on your credit reports with all three credit bureaus and inspecting your credit entries once every quarter. But for the busy individual of today this is time consuming and rather impractical.

This service will not be able to stop someone from using your social security number in other ways, such as opening utility accounts or phone and wireless accounts under your name. Credit monitoring alone can not protect your identity from medical benefits theft. Even though identity theft insurance is often included with this service, in the case of medical records and benefits, the consequences often can not be resolved with monetary assistance.

If you’re interested in going with credit monitoring services, you should know that you may be charged extra for the monitoring of your credit score, there may also be an allotted number of credit reports and score requests per membership year and any additional ones you request will cost you extra.

Some credit monitoring agencies may claim to offer total credit fraud protection but you need to know if they actually monitor all three credit bureaus or just one, also they may not monitor and review your credit as often as they advertise unless you actually request it. So it’s important to ask what they monitor, how often and from what sources.

Why complete identity theft protection is a better choice

As we aleady mentioned, Identity theft does not only include your credit, it can strike from any angle. You have to realize that your information is out there. Your name, address, and social security number are widely distributed around many different organizations, financial institutions, insurance companies, HR records, public records etc. These are the aspects that can be covered by a complete and sophisticated system of identity theft protection.

If you’re already considering outsourcing the monitoring of your personal information, then don’t hit the “buy” button yet. In order to protect your identity completely, you need to first assess your own identity. Where is your personal information now? Who has your information? Have you ever had a second thought about rendering your personal information, even when you had no choice?

Fraud is everywhere and that’s why your best alternative is to consider a system of identity protection with cutting edge technology that not only watches after your credit accounts, but monitors the thriving online financial black markets where thousands of credit card accounts, social security numbers and other personal information are traded.

When you become a subscriber of identity theft protection services you get not only the benefit listed above, but many other points of identity protection like:

• Renewable fraud alerts
• Removal of your name from junk mail lists and pre-approved credit offers
• Lost or Stolen wallet assistance
• Identity theft recovery assistance
• Monitoring of utility and phone accounts in your name
• Internet and PC security software
• An insurance policy at no extra cost

These and other features are offered with your subscription to identity theft protection services from Trusted ID, Life Lock and Identity Truth. All of which offer a much more affordable and comprehensive suite of security features than credit monitoring alone.

Pre-Approved Credit Offers

Your personal information is traded between merchants, credit providers and the credit bureaus and unfortunately there is no law that can stop this practice, it can only be regulated. But these regulations do not properly address the security of your information as it gets exchanged. Pre-approved credit offers are one of the easiest ways to become a victim of identity theft because often these offer letters do not make it to their intended destination. Also, they are often thrown away whole, sometimes still in their envelopes. This risk can be avoided by shredding every piece of paper that contains any information of yours, but it would be best to simply opt out of pre-approved offers and one of the most convenient ways to accomplish this is when you enroll in an identity protection plan, since the plans will take care of removing your name from all pre-approved offers and junk mail lists.

Accessing to Public Records

Public records are the information that’s freely and easily available to anyone. This includes bankruptcy records, court records, fictitious name filings, marriage registration, real estate property records etc. All of this information can be accessed by anyone and it is often available at no cost. A person can get a great deal of detail about you from these records and it can be utilized to get credit or redirect your mail to an alternate location where an identity thief can receive it and learn even more about you.

Online Phishing Scams

One of the most common causes of identity theft is online phishing. This is still an effective method for identity thieves. If you have a Paypal account, you have more than likely received an email at one point or another asking you to verify your information by following a link that’s provided in the body of the email. Once you go to the website and enter in your information you’re typically redirected to a page that tells you that your information has been verified leaving you to think that you did the right thing, when in fact you just rendered your login information to the thief who operates the site. These emails are normally written to give the recipient a sense of urgency, normally expressed in the subject line that says something to the effect of “your account has been compromised” and that you must verify it now before it gets suspended. It’s a good trick that’s worked very effectively over the last five years, but more people are becoming aware that these are nothing more than identity fraud attempts.

Spear Phishing Scams

Because phishing alone is no longer as effective, identity thieves have become more resourceful and have gone so far as to target individuals specifically. This is normally done when they have learned more about the victim and realize that there’s potential for high gains by gathering even more information rather than just steal a credit card number. If identity thieves believe that you have major assets they might be able to exploit they will use more sophisticated methods for getting you to voluntarily surrender your information. This can be in the form of a direct phone call or an official looking letter from your financial institution in which they list information that looks and sounds official. They could also use public record information to inform themselves about you and sell you on the idea that they are a legitimate party trying to solve an issue for you.

Internet Security and Old Browsers

Another one of the common causes of identity theft are internet users who are simply not aware of the dangers of being connected to the internet without the proper protection. To protect against identity theft properly everyone needs to have Antivirus and firewall protection to keep malicious programs from entering your computer system. There are a number of malicious programs that can be installed on your system in passive mode that can compromise your personal information. Programs such as keyloggers are one of the many ways hackers get access to your information. These programs record every keystroke you type especially when you’re online then transfer this information to the thief. In other words any information you type can be seen by someone else including bank account login information, credit accounts and any other online destinations you normally access.

Old browsers are another serious problem that you have to address, but luckily it’s a simple fix. The older versions of Internet Explorer have a series of security holes and no one should ever access the internet using Internet Explorer 6 or below. All browsers are free to download and install, among the safest browsers available are Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Although no browser is 100% secure, you have more security features in Firefox and Opera.

Spam and pirated software

No matter how long you’ve been online, you probably have heard the word spam a number of times. Spam is a term used to describe the unsolicited emails that you receive on a daily basis that typically promote products. Spam is also a danger because of malicious code that can potentially run when you open these emails. Often these products are pirated popular software that’s offered at a huge discount. Even if you don’t buy the software, accessing the destination sites in these emails can be dangerous if your computer system is not properly protected. Also using pirated software is an easy way to fall prey to identity thieves. The software that you download free from these sites is often coded with Trojans that work silently gathering your sensitive data. So even though it may sound like a good offer, you’re better off deleting spam.

With the ongoing threat of identity theft, by now more and more people are starting to pay attention to the possible consequences of identity theft should it happen to them. So they’re probably now wondering, do identity theft protection services really work? Do I really need to spend the money to outsource protecting my identity? There unfortunately isn’t a straight answer to these questions. The needs, lifestyles and risks vary too much.

Identity theft cases are constantly in the news and the incidents vary from city clerks involved in criminal rings that steal identities to parents stealing the identities of their own children. People you do business with and those around you are as much likely to be the thieves as someone half way around the world.

If identity theft is a real concern for you, consider first taking on the task of implementing proactive and continuous efforts to secure your own identity. You can first start by following our own “Identity Theft Prevention Guide”, which is available for free to all our readers. This short guide will provide you with a basic list of things you need to be doing right now to protect your own identity.

The guide will prove that many of the prevention steps an identity theft protection company will do for you, you can do yourself. The difference in the two is the accuracy and effectiveness of their state of the art technology that helps to provide services that no individual can provide for themselves.

If the tasks listed on the guide are more than you can handle, then you need to consider outsourcing the task and this can prove beneficial and effective for your overall protection.

What identity theft protection services do:
•    Monitor credit reports to detect suspicious activities
•    Place and renew fraud alerts on your credit files with all three credit bureaus
•    Monitor online identity black markets
•    Assist when you lose your wallet or purse
•    Remove your name from unwanted mail/marketing lists
•    Opt you out of pre-approved credit offers
•    Provide medical benefits protection (only Trusted ID so far)
•    Extend protection for your family as well (Trusted ID and Identity-Truth)

These and other security features are automated for you so you don’t have to do it yourself. However the biggest benefit of these services besides the peace of mind you get from knowing you’re protected is the insurance policy or service warranty, which can range from $20,000 to $1,000,000 in case your identity does get compromised.

So do these services work? Yes they work, however they’re not 100% safe since identity thieves are becoming more and more resourceful and criminal rings are resorting to unconventional methods of identity theft which include bribing social workers, medical staff and financial clerks. It is best that you have some level of protection that includes a policy that will help you monetarily recover from an incident.