Identity theft is all around us these days:

“More than 4 million customer accounts at grocery stores in the Northeast and Florida were exposed to fraud. Hannaford Bros. Co. doesn’t yet know how the breach occurred.”
- MSNBC

“TJX discloses largest data theft: 45.7M customers” – USA Today

“University server in hackers’ hands for a year – In a disclosure that hasn’t been widely reported, one of the compromised servers, which held Social Security numbers belonging to 137,000 people, was penetrated by U.S. and overseas-based hackers for at least a year and possibly much longer” – CNet.com

Your personal information is spread out on multiple databases around the country. You should worry for your privacy.

In my line of work, i am exposed to such stories of identity theft from the corporate side of the picture. Trying to be on top, stopping hackers from gaining access to your private information. Credit card numbers social security, passports, etc.. are all traded for money. There is even a price list going around, that puts value on your information. My job is to stop hackers from getting to it.

But what about you? In this game you hold the passive role. How can i prevent the exploitation of my private identity. Suppose your identity was lost.

Lets say you bought a product online. Sure, you verified that the store was real and uses SSL for encryption, but what you didnt know is that this website kept credit card information. While websites are not allowed to store credit card information on databases (full cc number that is), some still do. A month passes, and this online store falls target to an attack. A hacker steals all the credit card records they were keeping. Another month passes, and you find a credit card charge for an unknown purchase. This scenario actually happened to me a while back. I was lucky to find it on my credit card report, and was able to cancel it on time. Do you really check every purchase made on your credit card?

Stop being passive, get active in protecting YOUR IDENTITY!

You may find new solutions for this problem.

LifeLock, is the product i use to guard my privacy. The first thing i liked about the service is this (taken from LifeLock website):

<<< Now this is some incentive for them to keep my identity safe. So, a form of insurance – Check.

Most of the work they do there is not a big secret. In fact i can try and do it myself but it will not be practical. Keeping track and remembering to check every few months is a hassle. I know that i cannot handle of all this information. The main thing here is that they are professionals.

LifeLock helps me sleep better at night.
LifeLock Identity Theft Prevention