ProtectMyID

From the very beginning of your financial life, and all the way through to the end, invest in an identity protection program. Protecting your identity is not just about you. A healthy and accurate identity from a credit perspective can shape the lives of you and your family members and provide comfort and peace of mind in your retirement years.

Recently we’ve seen an influx of news on the amount of identity theft that has occurred involving the deceased. The vast number of cases fall into a couple scenarios. One way identity thieves are committing the crime is by harvesting information from those known to be deceased. Another way is by creating synthetic identities which then become associated with a deceased person.

Mothers’ Day is upon us and extra appreciation is due to the women in our lives who seem to do it all. Between raising and feeding children, keeping the home clean and stocked, and maintaining a career – all while ferrying children to and from appointments and lessons… you name it, moms do it.

Even though gas prices have topped $4 a gallon in many states, travelers should prepare for crowds as they head out on their summer trips. Gas prices remain a concern for travelers, but better economic news and pent-up demand are expected to keep popular tourism spots busy in the coming months. To compensate for higher gas prices and ensure you have a great time on your vacation, our friends at AAA recommend the following budget-trimming tips.

With so much planning and so many tasks to complete before walking down the aisle, one cringes at the thought of further burdening a bride-to-be. However for modern couples – or most commonly, for modern women – there is a new marriage-related issue to consider: the risk of identity theft.

Facebook threats seem to be more prevalent than we had thought. Based on a growing number of reports about social networking and possible threats, this was a topic that we felt should be further explored. The survey sought to identify the types of threats we thought might be most common, based upon the experience of our victim advisors.

Over exposure of personal information, often from multiple sources, is one of the primary factors involved in identity theft cases. Too much personal information can provide an identity thief with all of the necessary data to begin building an impersonation profile.

Privacy settings on Facebook, and the difficulty in understanding their impact, have been the subject of several recent news articles and studies. Setting the Facebook user profile to “private” is the most fundamental step in protecting user information from misuse.

United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces the unsealing of a 15-count indictment charging Allen Gregory Schleicher, a/k/a Gregory Klonowski, (49, Ruskin) with 10 counts of mail fraud, four counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, Schleicher faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for each mail fraud charge, 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering charge, and two years in federal prison, consecutive to any other sentence, for the aggravated identity theft charge.

We’ve been talking about social media and identity theft at ProtectMyID for years and are glad that media outlets like the Wall Street Journal are now covering this topic, too. One recent WSJ piece on the aforementioned subject cited recent studies that show an increase in identity theft in 2011, noting that one of the factors is the vast wealth of information people share on their social media accounts.