Monday, March 03, 2008

Be Careful of Identity Theft

According to some surveys, there are nearly a thousand victims of identity theft every hour. This large number is mainly due to the extensive use of online banking. As a result, you should really be careful if you are a person who constantly uses financial services on the internet.

Of course some banks may have fraud protection and you may not be liable if someone use your bank account to purchase. However, it will still require you some time to resolve the problem. You may need to apply for new credit cards and change all the information associated with the bank accounts. It will not be worth spending the time to do that if there are ways to protect yourself from identity theft.

In order to stay away from identity theft, you should take some measures. The first thing is to be careful of scams on the internet. For example, you may have received emails asking for your login information of your internet banking account. You should never reply to these emails with your login information.

Nine out of ten times they are only phising scams, this means that they are trying to get your account information by the scam emails. As a matter of fact some banks even warn their customers that they will never ask for the password of the online banking account of a customer!

Since the technology is so advanced these days, the scam emails may not ask you for your login information directly. Instead, they will give you links in the emails and ask you to follow the link to log into your bank account for maintenance or updating information.

You should never follow any link from these emails and enter the login information. It can be just a link to a fraud website and the theft can get your login information once you enter the password and log into your "bank account". The theft will just withdraw all the money you have in the account within a few hours! It may be already too late when you discovered that it has been a scam.

You have always bear in mind that when you try to log into your online bank accounts, you should try to type the url on the navigation bar instead of clicking links. If you have any doubt about emails that are sent from the bank, you should try to contact the bank in person before you make any decision based on the emails you receive. By doing that you will be able to be saved from identity theft.

The author has great interest in finance. You can check his website on Financial Planning and Forex Blog. Be sure to check Stock Market Analyzer and Life Insurance for Over 50s Tips.

No comments: