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There are many signs that your identity has been stolen, even if you haven’t started to feel the real pain yet. If you detect these signs early, it probably isn’t too late to keep the damage to a minimum if you act quickly. Unless you are already at number 12…
- Your bills or statements are not arriving in your mail on time.
- You notice unauthorized charges on your credit card bill.
- You notice new accounts or erroneous information on your credit report.
- You are denied credit for a large purchase.
- You receive credit card bills from cards you don’t own.
- You are contacted by a collection agency on an item you didn’t purchase.
- You receive bills for unknown purchases.
- You are unable to set up new banking,loan or brokerage accounts.
- You notice withdrawals on your checking or savings account that you didn’t make.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Detecting Identity Theft, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention
This morning, I delivered a fraud training speech in Beverly Hills. As you can imagine, the famous and the wealthy tend to suffer more than the average person from information overexposure and fraud. They are, after all, public figures, worth a great deal, and the focus of over-zealous fans and media. The rich and famous are the perfect storm for information abuse, and we have much to learn from the way they protect their privacy. Dishonest people want to be them, at least long enough to drain their sizable resources, and their family and friends aren’t often far behind. Identity theft and other types of fraud, unfortunately, allow this fantasy to become a reality in the hands of a clever impostor.
The rich and famous are the perfect storm for information abuse, and we have much to learn from the way the protect their privacy.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Beverly Hills, celebrities, Celebrity, Famous, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Movie Stars, Prevention, Protection, Sileo
Any airline, or any company, for that matter, that hasn’t upgraded their fraud-protection system in the last couple of years is an open book of credit cards and financial information to hackers and thieves. Credit card abuse, where a thief enters a stolen card number on a web site, is the primary source of online fraud. A new type of online fraud specifically targets airlines – a thief hacks into a frequent flier account (which we generally protect with weak passwords) and books a ticket for an unsuspecting second victim (you and your miles being the first), who pays cash for the ticket resold to them by the thief. When you catch on, you go after the victim, not the thief, who is long gone.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Airline Fraud, Airlines, credit card fraud, Cyberfraud, Frequent Flyer, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Mileage Fraud, Mileage Points, Speaker
Identity theft prevention has become more important than ever before. All over the country, budget cuts have forced many law enforcement agencies to lay-off a large number of employees. The Oakland Police Station cut 80 officers from their force of 687 last month alone. Such severe cuts leave the department ill-equipped to respond to calls involving burglary, vandalism and especially identity theft.
Non-violent crimes have sunk to the bottom of police stations agenda. With no funds to investigate these crimes and catch the criminals, identity theft rates will continue to rise. Criminals will see this as an opportunity to prey on victims and steal identity for financial gain without any consequences.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Protection, Identity Theft Statistics, Identity Theft Victims, John Sileo, Law Enforcement, Police Stations
A new type of scam has surfaced that uses bullying tactics to get you to reveal identity information over the phone. Here is how it works:
The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and states that you’ve failed to report for jury duty. They inform you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest. The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information for “verification” purposes. Specifically, they ask for the victim’s Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information — exactly what the thief needs to commit identity theft!
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Email Scam, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Jury Duty Scam, Online Scam. Fraud
Students heading to college and young adults living away from their parents’ home for the first time are particularly vulnerable to Identity Theft. In a 2010 survey, Javelin Strategy and Research found that young adults, aged 18-24, take the longest to detect identity theft – 132 days on average – when compared to other age groups.
College-bound students should take the following steps to fight identity theft:
1. School mailboxes can be easily tampered with and are not always safe. Instead of having sensitive (bank, legal, personal) documents sent to your apartment or dorm room, have them sent to a permanent address (your parents’ home or the post office) or sent requiring your signature.
2. Invest in a fire-proof lock box to store all your important documents. This can be vital when you are sharing a living space and can’t control everyone that comes and goes. You should lock up your Social Security card, passport and bank and credit card statements. Shred any important financial documents that come in the mail and never leave any sensitive mail lying out.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: back to school, College Student, credit reports, Facebook, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Student, Student Identity Theft
I had the privilege of speaking at Fort Bragg this summer! Here is what they had to say:
I saw John Sileo’s presentation at a conference recently and I was thoroughly impressed. He really interacted so well with the audience that I actually wanted to bring him to Ft Bragg to help us celebrate our Consumer Awareness Month. It took several months of coordination, but we finally all got it together and John came down and did an excellent presentation to help us out with teaching our community all about identity theft. His presentation was interactive, dynamic, the audience was really pleased and after the presentation they held him there for an hour asking great questions! We were thoroughly pleased with John and we really enjoyed his presentation.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Fort Bragg, Ft. Bragg, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Information Security Expert, Information Security Speaker, John Sileo, Military Identity Theft, Privacy Means Profit
Facebook has the Population of the Third Largest Country
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 marked a big day for Facebook. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post that the social networking website hit over 500 million users in only 6 years.
If you take a look at the worlds largest countries in terms of population (as of today according to Wikipedia) you find that China is #1 with 1,339,130,000, India is #2 with 1,184,513,000 and #3 is the United States with only 309,944,000. This would mean that if Facebook were a real country with their population of 500,000,000, then it would clearly surpass the USA for the #3 ranking.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: facbook, Facebook, facebook privacy, Facebook Safety, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Mark Zuckerberg, social networking, Social Networking Expert
In the Privacy Calendar, the action items that are important to take to protect your identity are listed by priority rather than mind-set. The order was determined according to three criteria:
- Which steps need to be taken first to make the process simple?
- Which actions are most effective at preventing identity theft?
- Which items are you most likely to complete given time and resource constraints?
The detailed information for taking each of the steps is contained in the individual mind-set chapters of Privacy Means Profit, which are shown in italics and enclosed in parentheses following the steps, for easy identification. I strongly recommend that you refer back to each chapter for in depth explanations of each step.
I also highly recommend that you set up a schedule for yourself and complete the items phase by phase. Take 10 minutes a day, one hour per week, or one weekend a month and schedule time to ‘‘accumulate privacy.’’ If you have to wait on one of the action items—for example, you order your credit report but it will be 10 days before you receive it—move on to another of the items further down the list and return to the item you skipped when you receive the report.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Identity Protection, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Privacy Calendar, Privacy Means Profit
