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10 Ways to Avoid Identity Theft 2. Call 1-888-5OPTOUT and ask to stop credit card companies from sending pre-approved credit card applications to your house. They are ticking identity theft time bombs. 3. Ask your credit card firm to cease delivery of "convenience checks." They, too, are ticking time bombs. 4. You're entitled to one free credit report each year. Get it as soon as possible and review it carefully. 5. Order a credit report a month or more before you make a big purchase or apply for credit, to be sure there are no surprises in your history. 6. Hassle companies that ask for personal information, such as your phone number at a checkout line. The harder we make it on companies, the less they will be inclined to continue the practice. 7. It's impossible to tell what's real and what's fake online. Just delete any e-mail that asks for personal information. 8. Just hang up on telemarketers, particularly ones who seem to be fishing for personal information, like your birthday. 9. Limit the number of credit cards you hold, and religiously inspect your financial statements each month. Consumer rights quickly fade over time; the sooner you discover an identity theft incident, the better. 10. Most of the time, you can't prevent an ID theft incident from occurring, because two-thirds of the time, some company that leaked the data is to blame. So be prepared, and be organized. Save paper bank records for a year, at least. You'll need them to prove your account balance in the event of a ID theft incident. Try These Password Dos & Don't Rules Use combinations of upper- and lowercase characters, as well as symbols and numbers. Most hackers focus on commonly used words in dictionary databases. Pick long words. The more characters, the harder it is to hack. Combine two unusual, long words around a special character, e.g. labyrinthine;gesticulate. Use the first letter of each word from a favorite saying, song lyric or poem. So "Somewhere over the Rainbow" becomes SOTR or sOtR. Use foreign language words. Combining a foreign language word and an English word is even more effective.
Use a word that appears in a common dictionary. Use a common word that simply ends with a special character or a number (Super1 or Flash$). Hackers are aware of this trick. Use the same password multiple times. Your debit and credit cards should not have the same PIN numbers, for example. Use a series, either forwards or back wards (i.e., ABCDEF 654321). Use common keyboard sequences like QWERTY. Use an easily guessed word like your name or any variation of it. Use something that people might be able to guess from your wallet if it's stolen, like your child's name or your favorite sports team.
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