Protect Your Identity

All you have to do is… Opt out and watch your credit.

Time to execute; 90 minutes

Good until; Indefinitely

There’s no shortage of products promising to fend off identity theft. The easiest solution: Follow these three steps to lock up your data and keep tabs on your credit.

Step 1 – Dry up junk mail; Thieves use your pre-approved credit card offers to open accounts in your name, which is the hardest type of ID theft to detect. Opt out of receiving the junk mail by calling 888-567-8688, a service run by the credit bureaus. Select option three to permanently remove your name from marketing lists (you can always opt in later).

Step 2 – Go paperless; Shredding will eliminate your paper trail. Even easier is to receive and pay bills online, which ensures that information cannot be lifted from stolen mail. Plus, with 24-hour account access, you’ll see an unauthorized charge on your card right away.

Step 3 – Watch over your credit; it’s easy to request a free report from one of the big three credit bureaus every four months at www.AnnualCreditReport.com

Want more oversight? For $5.00 per month, www.TripleAlert.com will monitor your credit and alert you to any changes. Even better is a credit freeze, but just 25 states allow it, in some cases only for ID theft victims.

TIP: Hours you need to spend worrying about ID theft with a credit freeze; “0”

Source: Money Magazine 2006