Helping Seniors Prevent Identity Theft – Part 1
Many seniors have become quite comfortable with a wide array of technology: This includes the Internet for searching and online shopping; Smartphones for staying in touch with family; and Facetime and Skype for watching the grandchildren grow up, even from a distance.
But the more you use various forms of technology in your day-to-day life, the more you can run the risk of becoming the victim of identity theft, perpetrated by unscrupulous fraudsters. Indeed, these thieves sometimes target seniors as being unwary and particularly vulnerable to this type of crime.
At its simplest, your online “identity” can include straightforward personal information, such as name, email address, and cellphone number. At a more complex level, it can include website-specific accounts in your name (for banking, investing and online shopping), unique passwords, and credit-card information provided to make your online payments easier.
Whether the information is simple or sophisticated, the common thread is that thieves can use it to impersonate you to steal funds, obtain goods or services under your name, and ring up unauthorized transactions.
Here are some tips to prevent this:
Documents, Cards and Cellphones
For identity thieves, some of the easiest pickings take the form of personal information found on government or banking documents, identification cards and similar paperwork. To help safeguard this information you should consider the following steps.
- Take an inventory of your personal documentation, including your birth certificate, Passport, Social Insurance Number, and credit cards. Anything not vital for your daily living should be set aside in a safe place, rather than carried around where you run the risk of having it lost or stolen.
- Do not allow an in-person business to photocopy your identification unless there is a verified, legitimate business reason for doing so.
- Set up your Smartphone, and any similar devices that contains personal information, so that it automatically locks out users after a certain period of inactivity and requires a password to re-open.
- Do not leave your Smartphone in places where it could be stolen or accessed without your knowledge, and do not use it in public places where a fraudster could look over your shoulder and write down or memorize your personal information.
Limit Shared Information
It’s a good practice to minimize the information that you provide to others. In the retail setting, for example, it is not uncommon for sales clerks to ask for your phone number, postal code, or email address, ostensibly because they need it to complete even the most routine of purchases. In reality, the information is usually collected simply to generate sales data and create targeted marketing; there is generally no legal requirement to actually provide this information in this kind of setting.
Likewise in an Internet environment, when filling out an online form you can easily omit or decline to provide those pieces of information that are marked as “optional”.
Safeguarding Your Identity at Home
Because your physical mailbox (outside your home) will contain lettermail bearing a good deal of your personal information, you should be especially vigilant about the mail that arrives – or should arrive – there.
Specifically:
- Try to keep track of incoming cheques, credit cards renewals, and bills that are expected to arrive, and promptly advise the sender if they do not.
- Collect any mail that is no longer needed, and which contains personal or financial information, and ensure that it is shredded and disposed of in a secure fashion.
In next month’s installment of this series, we’ll shift our focus to the ways in which seniors can be smarter about their activity online.