Your identity and your reputation are precious assets and it’s very important to look after them at all times when you are online.
What is identity theft?
Unfortunately there are criminals who use the Internet in various ways to gain access to people’s personal details illegally. They then use those personal details to open bank accounts and get credit cards, loans, state benefits and documents such as passports and driving licences in that person’s name. Because this is a very lucrative business for criminals, they devise numerous ways of trying to get hold of personal documents or contact people under false pretences via the Internet and to trick them into sharing that information. Sometimes they even rifle through bins to try and get hold of valuable documents or items containing people’s personal details.
Once they have obtained all this information, the criminals have effectively stolen that person’s identity.
Identity theft can result in fraud affecting your personal financial circumstances, as well as costing government and financial services millions of pounds a year. You need to know how to protect yourself, and understand what to do if it happens to you.
Protecting your personal data
Be careful about the information you give away about yourself online.
Once someone tricks you into giving them your information, there’s no delete button on the Internet. If you publish something that contains personal information (for example, your date of birth, your address, dates when you are going on holiday etc), even if you delete it later, you have no control over how it is stored, copied or archived. Think twice about publishing something you might later regret.
For that reason it’s a good idea not to share too much information on social networking sites and blog sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Identity thieves can piece together your identity from a variety of sources to get a complete story. For more information on how to be safe whilst using social networking sites refer to our section on Social networking safety.
Equally, if you write and publish a blog or maintain a personal website, it is good idea to keep your personal details private, rather than sharing too much information online from which people could piece together your online identity. For more information on blogs refer to our section on Blog Safety.
Tips to help you avoid identity theft
There are a lot of things that you can do to protect yourself, make sure that your personal data stays safe, and that your identity is never stolen or compromised. Here are just a few ideas:
Shred confidential waste
To stop people obtaining confidential information from your dustbin, make sure that you shred all your unwanted confidential waste before you throw it away or recycle it.
Keep a separate email account to manage your sensitive personal data
Have a separate email account that you only use for password reminders and online account details to be sent to. Then, if your main email account becomes compromised, you will still be able to use this non-public, hopefully uncompromised account with which you can manage your password resets and communicate with operators of any sites using critically sensitive information such as online banking etc.
Do not publish the details of this special email account to friends, on social networking sites etc. or use it for non-sensitive sites such as general shopping sites.
It’s also a good idea to make sure this special email account has a different password from your main email account, and for extra security, host the special account with a different email host from your main account. That way, even if your email host is hacked, your special email account will be not be compromised.
Use different passwords for different sites
Don’t use the same password across multiple websites. It is obviously more difficult to manage a number of different passwords, but it is definitely worth the effort. For example there is a security breach at your social networking site, it will not expose your online banking or other sensitive credentials if you have used different passwords for those sites.
Password manager software and online data safes
To help you keep your passwords, user IDs and other sensitive data safe somewhere other than in your head (where you might forget it) or written down (where anyone can find it) you might consider using tools such as password manager software or an online data safe. Many types of security and anti-virus software (such as Kaspersky PURE) include a password manager. You can store all your user log-in IDs and passwords within the software, and the password manager software itself is protected by an encrypted password. That means that as long as you can remember the code to decrypt the password manager, you don’t need to remember all the others.
Online data safes work in a similar way – all the information you choose to save in an online data safe is encrypted and compressed before it even leaves your computer.
It is then stored on a secure storage site as a backup copy, using your internet connection. The information is then ‘locked’ with an encrypted code that is the only way to access the data you store within it.
Always check a website for the padlock symbol
Whenever you are using a website that requires you to input sensitive personal data (address details, phone numbers, bank details etc) always check the padlock symbol that should be displayed. If a website cannot be bothered to at least encrypt the internet connection, then don’t fill in any forms asking you for personal information.
Instead, choose a competitor that does use encryption and do business with an organisation that is at least doing the basics to look after your data.
Learn more about safety when online shopping.
Beware of unsolicited emails
Don’t open unsolicited emails as they can contain links to code that can infect your computer. If you do open one by mistake, don’t click on any links or reply in any way to the email.
See more about hoax or unsolicited emails.
Following this advice should protect your personal data and enable you to feel confident about using the Internet without compromising your security or having your identity stolen.
Further information
For further information on Identity theft visit: www.identitytheft.org.uk
