As more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers knock on doors all across the country, Lionheart Assurance Solutions offers some advice to ensure people do not become victims of criminals attempting to steal their personal information.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has issued a press release alerting the public to be on the lookout for people posing as census workers and then using the information to steal their identities. Lionheart Assurance Solutions, a firm specializing in employee legal plans and identity theft safeguards, says people need to take this danger seriously.
“Identity theft has become the fastest growing white-collar crime in America, and this is a golden opportunity for identity thieves,” says Chuck Siegel, CEO of Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP.
While we should all certainly cooperate with census workers (this is required by law and failure could result in a fine), it is also important to know the difference between a real census worker and a con artist. There are several different ways that people can ensure they do not fall prey to potential census scams.
Ask to see identification before talking with the worker. All census workers carry official government badges (marked with only their name), a special handheld electronic device and a confidentiality notice. Under no circumstances will a census worker ask to enter your home.
Understand that real Census Bureau workers are only there to verify your address and how many people are living at the location. If a person comes to your door asking for anything else, such as a bank account or social security number, refuse to give them the information. Real census workers do not ask these types of questions.
The 2010 census form asks only 10 questions, all of which pertain to accurately recording the number of people living at a particular location.
The U.S. Census Bureau may come to your door or call you over the phone, but they will not contact you by email. Beware of any electronic communication asking for your personal information.
“This is certainly a timely item to include in our Lionheart Assurance Solutions Scam Prevention Toolkit.” says Siegel. “Many Americans will be expecting to hear from the Census Bureau this year and may not have enough information to discern between legitimate and illegitimate requests for information.”
To find out more ways you can safeguard yourself and your business from identity theft, view the Lionheart Assurance Scam Prevention toolkit.
About Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP:
Since 1997, Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP® is a unique business services firm specializing in employee legal plans and identity theft restoration benefits for employers of all sizes nationwide.
Organizations that proactively educate their employees about identity theft threats can reduce their chances of a costly data breach. Lionheart Assurance Solutions’ training is designed to impact the way employees think. Changing the way employees think can result in a change in behavior that could reduce the risk of security breaches leading to identity theft.
Guided by a senior management team with more than a century of proven business success, Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP® offers employee legal and identity theft restoration plans designed to enhance worker productivity by helping employees keep their focus on their work instead of on personal problems.
For small to medium-sized clients, Lionheart also offers a full range of plans that help small businesses to “level the playing field” by providing access to the kinds of legal and consultative advice that typically only a large corporation can afford.
Visit www.LionheartAssuranceSolutions.com for more information.
Social networking sites have become so popular that if you don’t have a MySpace or Facebook page, people may consider you a little odd, at least if you’re under a certain age. These sites are certainly popular and many find them to be endlessly entertaining; but these sites also present a problem in terms of protecting your privacy.
When you sign up for an account on these sites, you need to provide a lot of personal information, something which hasn’t escaped the notice of identity thieves and hackers. These criminals are finding ways into these systems, stealing personal data and using this information to defraud users.
Scams on social networks are becoming increasingly common as the user bases of these sites continue to grow. Making the situation especially dangerous is the fact that many younger users who grew up with the web are quite a bit more trusting than their older counterparts. These users will often provide a lot of personal information right on their profile page, making the work of scammers even easier.
According to PC World, the average user of social networking sites lists at least three different types of personal information on their profile pages which can easily be exploited by criminals. These include their name, address, date of birth, phone number, the names of their parents and other information which an identity thief needs in order to commit fraud.
The overwhelming majority of social networking users are not even aware of the fact that they can adjust the privacy settings associated with their accounts in order to restrict access to these kinds of personal details. It’s also the case that most users don’t know who can look at this information on their pages and that most people use the same passwords for everything and rarely, if ever change these passwords.
Most instances of identity theft over social networking services happens as the result of adding someone who you don’t know as a friend on the network. They may be listed as a friend of someone you do know personally, but before you go ahead and click that invite button, you may want to ask someone if they have any idea who he or she is.
It’s important to not only know that there are privacy settings which you can configure but to actually use them to prevent access to your profile by anyone except people you actually know and have added as friends.
Other ways to keep your personal data safe on the web:
You can get a credit freeze to secure your credit, preventing new accounts from being opened under your name. This can be done by going to the website consumersunion.org and following the directions given for your state.
Implement identity theft protection and prevention:
There are identity protection monitoring services available which provide round the clock monitoring by scanning public records daily, alerting you if any suspicious activity is detected. In the event that your identity is stolen, there are even services which help you to put a stop to this crime and repair the damage identity theft can cause.
The important thing here is to be aware of the risks of giving out too much personal information on social networking sites; especially if you don’t take advantage of the privacy features these sites offer. Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that you protect yourself from identity theft and fraud by knowing the risks and taking action to avoid becoming a victim of criminals and scammers.
Whenever you type in your PIN number at an ATM or at a terminal in a store, conceal the keypad by cupping your hand over it. While it’s not that common, you never know for sure if the person standing right behind you is only there to try to steal this important information.
Your Social Security Number or other important personal identification data should never be given to anyone who calls you on the phone (though if you’re placing the call, you know exactly who you’re calling and that this information is actually needed, this is OK, obviously). Instead, ask for their number and find out if this number belongs to a company who you can provide this information to in confidence.
If you leave your outgoing mail in your mailbox for the postman to pickup or otherwise exposed, it’s time to break this habit. Instead, make sure that all of your mail is placed into a real post box or sent from your local post office to keep your mail away from prying eyes.
When your credit card statements arrive, look them over closely. There are a lot of small acts of theft which occur, such as bill padding at restaurants. It may only be a few dollars at a time, but it does add up – and unless you’re looking for it, you may never notice. Scammers and identity thieves are learning to fly under the radar by stealing smaller amounts of money, thus avoiding detection.
Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that your computer passwords or PIN numbers should never include any part of your Social Security Number. Good passwords are at least six characters in length and are made of numbers, letters (upper and lower case) and symbols. You should also change this password frequently.
The most powerful tool at your disposal for protecting your identity is information. It’s important to know what tactics that scammers and identity thieves are using. Since they change their techniques from time to time to exploit new security weaknesses or avoid being caught, being up to date is essential.
You need to make a habit of being aware of the safety of any items which contain confidential personal information. For example, keep your car doors locked when you’re not on the road and never leave your purse or wallet in your car. Make sure that your laptop is never left unattended in public – your computer is a gold mine for any would-be identity thief.
Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP reminds its clients that the best way to avoid falling victim to a ripoff or fraud is to understand the tell-tale signs. For more information, visit http://lionheartassurance.com today.
What would you do if you became a victim of identity theft, with a criminal making purchases in your name, using your credit? What if you or a family member were tricked into handing over personal or financial information online? Before you sign a contract, how do you know that the terms and conditions it spells out don’t compromise your privacy or expose you to fraud?
Do you have the information you need to make sure that your legal rights are protected? Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP offers a full range of services which include notification of suspicious activity which may indicate that the security of your personal information has been compromised. Lionheart clients also receive unlimited access to expert legal counsel and legal advice to help them understand and protect their right to privacy.
Have you ever needed to ask an attorney for advice on a legal matter but found the cost of their services to be higher than what your budget would comfortably allow? When you choose Lionheart Assurance Solutions, you immediately gain access to the legal services available to the country’s largest Life Events Legal Plans provider. All it takes is a single call to get in touch with a lawyer who can provide you with the advice you need; and if you need a call made or a letter written for you by an attorney, they can also provide this service.
If you have a teenage child or happen to have a less than spotless driving record yourself, Lionheart’s Life Events Legal Plan gives you access to attorneys who can provide you or a family member covered under the plan with the expert legal representation you need.
Whether you’re facing a looming foreclosure, struggling with credit card debt or are dealing with a severance contract, the law firms which Lionheart Assurance Solutions works with can provide you with the legal services you’re looking for.
By virtue of American citizenship, we’re guaranteed certain legal rights; don’t wait until you run into trouble before you begin exercising these rights and defending yourself. Lionheart Assurance Solutions’ legal plans are becoming part of the benefits packages offered by many employers nationwide in order to reduce the expense borne by the employee in these events, as well as reducing time spent away from work to handle legal matters; it’s a win-win situation.
If you’re looking for the kind of legal representation and services available through Lionheart Assurance Solutions, visit http://lionheartassurancesolutions.com today. An independent agent will happily follow up to help you get the protection you need for your business, yourself and your family.
The spam that normally fills your inbox can also be highly dangerous for your identity. You may simply discard spam emails from your inbox, but what about the innumerable emails you come across that appear to be from popular social site or shopping platform like eBay and PayPal? If you have an account at either one of these sites or one that is similar, then you must be extremely careful about emails your receive. With identity theft on the rise, it has become essential to know how to protect yourself from fake email scams if you want to keep your finances safe.
Fake messages sent to you by scammers are for the sole purpose of phishing your private information and they are meant to cheat you, both financially and socially. Lionheart Assurance Solutions suggests the best thing to do is to automatically delete email messages that appear to be from PayPal and eBay unless you are expecting something from them or if your full name on the specific account is not in the salutation of the email. Even then, read the email thoroughly and do not reply immediately unless you are absolutely sure the email is legitimate.
Another safeguard to ensure the emails you receive are authenticated by DKIM or Domain Keys Identified Mail. You can enable the feature from within your mail settings. Check with your software provider. This program only authenticates emails from eBay and PayPal.
There are various social networking sites that have their own authentication process. If you are using social networking sites make sure that you are aware of the security and privacy measure for each of these sites you interact with.
Oftentimes, scammers send adware and spyware along with their scam emails so be very careful before you open any suspicious email messages or from an unknown source. If you are a person who does a lot of online transactions you need to be careful about your email. In most cases, your account is hacked by the means of spyware that is sent via spam or suspicious emails.
Lionheart Assurance Solutions advises not to tell anyone about the login id as well as the password for your PayPal or eBay accounts. This information can reach those cyber criminals who are very difficult to trace.
Also, kept in mind that although sites like Google have their own anti-spam firewalls in place, it is not always easy to prevent unwanted spam from popping up in your Inbox. The success rate for anti-spam measures is never 100 percent. Anti-spam software tools are automatically configured in most cases. They are designed to look for probable signs of ‘bad’ emails and block them or warn you against them. But, the problem is most of these ‘bad’ emails are coded and designed to look authentic and clean. It is impossible for any automatic software to stop them all.
With the advancement of technology an increasing number of scammers are finding out newer ways to cheat the gullible people who fall into their lucrative traps.
The whole process of buying and selling over the Net happens electronically with soft cash. For example, if you buy something over a shopping site the exact price of the article will be taken out of your account and placed in the account of the seller. You do not have to worry about the transfer process as everything happens automatically. But, just think how dangerous this process can be if a scammer gets hold of your account number and secret code because you were not more vigilant!
The greatest disadvantage is that most of the time the person who is cheated does not know this for sure and often there is a significant time gap before he realizes it. This often allows the fraud to escape scot free.
In today’s times PayPal scams are being increasingly common. So keep in mind the old adage- better safe than sorry- and act accordingly! Learn more about preventing Paypal Scams and read more articles from Lionheart Assurance Solutions, then stay tuned to this blog.