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Hacking is a huge problem online today. It’s all too common for users of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to find at some point that their accounts have been compromised or their passwords changed without authorization. Owners of these social networking sites now consider security their primary concern since they are under immense pressure to offer safe features to their users. Users want features which keep them safe from hackers.
Most social networking sites do not have adequate security in place and do not use SSL. This makes each session ID used by all users available on proxy. That is the information hackers use to break into accounts. In one recent example, Twitter was hacked due to administration failure. It is also well known that YouTube hackers from around the world use cross-scripting failure to enter invalid or virus-infected information to interfere with the system and hack into accounts. This is done to obtain personal data illegally.
It’s quite clear you are extremely vulnerable to Identity Theft every time you use these social networking sites. Too often, users from all around the globe have unlimited blind faith when it comes to friends on these networking sites. Many users will even share personal information through one of these sites at some point. A survey revealed that one in three users have at least three pieces of personal information posted on their accounts. This information is often their name, postal address, or phone number. A professional hacker can take these bits of information and steal your identity through the internet. It can harm you considerably offline as well!
Let’s look at some precautions you can take to use Social Networking sites safely. This will reduce your risk of becoming a victim of Identity Theft:
Never trust someone you don’t know in real life as your online friend because they could just as well be scammers looking to take advantage of your trust. Never share any type of personal information with someone you have not met or seen in person.
Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that you reject all unknown friend requests or requests from any person who claims to be a friend of a friend. Check with the real life friend to ensure they actually know the person in real life first.
Never display any personal information online, no matter what the circumstances may be. Do not share your street address, phone number, relative names or bank account numbers through any type of website. Remember hackers are constantly watching for such information to take steal your identity.
Most social networking sites provide personal security settings on all accounts, but most users do not realize they are even there. Always use available features, especially locking your account and all photographs so that only your invited friends have access.
Security Freeze: search for the words “credit freeze” or “security freeze” on any search engine and learn how to set this up for yourself. These programs lock your credit and prevent others from opening accounts of any type under your name. This instantly stops hackers from using any information found online.
Account Monitoring: monitor your credit and bank accounts so you can catch it early if someone does make use of your identity.
Identity Recovery Assistance: if you fear your identity has been compromised, you must report it immediately to the authorities. Quick action can limit the damages long term.
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Would you be upset for getting a parking ticket when you hadn’t done the parking – when you’d been at home all the time? Or how about going to the hospital and discovering that your health insurance has been canceled? People who’ve been victims of identity theft run into these kinds of problems all the time. If you’ve been under the impression that having your identity stolen can’t hurt you, you’d be wrong. Identity theft can have some really terrible side effects.
So, what different types of identity theft are there, and which ones do you need to be concerned about. Let’s take a look at some of the different ways someone can steal your identity.
Character identity theft – This is one of the more serious types. Character identity theft could cause you to be charged with crimes you never committed.
Theft of your social security number – Someone who steals your social security number can get all kinds of private information on you. They have access to your bank statements, old tax forms, private records and more. They can take out new accounts in your name, and it’s hard to trace, since the thief has your identification.
Drivers’ license theft – When the thief gets a valid copy of your drivers’ license. If this person commits a driving offense while they have your license, you could end up with points on your license. You could also end up paying for auto insurance you never bought, or find your premiums rising because a thief was in an accident.
Medical identity theft – If someone else has used your identity at a hospital or medical facility, you could find that you’re denied insurance coverage. You could be charged hospital and medical bills that you aren’t responsible, and have to pay for treatments and medications you never received.
Credit theft – The type of identity theft most people are aware of, credit theft often happens when a thief gets into your bank account or borrows under your name. This can leave you in serious financial straits. A thief can apply for big loans, new credit cards, and all kinds of other types of credit, ruining your record and causing real problems when you buy a home or a car.
Now that you know what kinds of problems you can face from identity theft, you also know to be careful. Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that you keep track of your belongings, never trust anyone with your personal information, and be very careful of online frauds that try to harvest your numbers for someone else’s use. If you believe your identity has been stolen, act fast. Report the fact to the authorities, get in touch with your creditors and the credit reporting bureaus, and have your credit rating frozen. Get new copies of all your forms of ID and credit cards, and have the old ones invalidated. It’s the best way to take action against a thief.
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identity theft,
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The immensely popular online classified ad site Craigslist is known in much of the world as a great place to look for a job, an apartment, to meet people and of course, to buy, sell or give away all manner of things. By and large, users appreciate the site’s no-frills approach and the ease with which Craigslist facilitates small to medium sized business transactions between individuals and for the most part, people feel positive about their experiences with the site (full disclosure: I’m writing this while sitting at a desk I found on Craigslist, in a chair which was also found through the site).
However, there are always a few bad apples somewhere in the barrel, especially when you have a barrel as large as one represented by the enormous user base of this site. Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that users need to keep an eye out for scams, but thankfully, there are a few easy ways to spot all but the most sophisticated Craigslist scams.
1) As the site itself suggests, try to avoid making non-local transactions via the site. You may run across ads posted by people from (or purporting to be from) other countries or on the other side of your own country. These are best avoided – there are plenty of other people in your own city who you can deal with face to face.
2) Remember the old saw that if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If you see a posting offering far more than seems to make sense given the price they’re asking, you’re very likely looking at some sort of a scam.
3) Watch out for poorly written posts, especially those claiming to be for a business. While not everyone is a skilled writer, you can generally assume that if someone’s trying to sell something, they’ll take the time to proofread their post. Be very suspicious of posts which are rife with spelling or grammatical errors.
4) This is such an elementary rule that it seems hardly worth mentioning, but you should never (never!) give out any personal information when dealing with people over Craigslist such as bank or credit card account numbers or your social security number. Divulging this kind of sensitive information is practically asking to become a victim of identity theft.
Craigslist is a great place to buy or sell just about anything you could want or to advertise your business; but when you do business through this popular classified ad site, always be careful and keep the safety of your personal information in mind.
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Lionheart Assurance Presents Today’s Topic
Important questions business owners should ask themselves to maximize efficiency and bottom line profitability
Question #1
Do your employees face personal problems like…
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Home foreclosures?
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Bankruptcy?
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Or creditor harassment calls?
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How about divorce?
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Or child custody issues?
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Do they ever receive traffic tickets?
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Or been victims of identity theft?
Any of these things happen to your employees? sure they do.
Now here’s Question #2
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Do your employees’ personal problems effect your business? Do they effect employee absenteeism? How about employee productivity?
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What about accidents? Can the distraction of personal problems make them more likely?
It’s no mystery that employee’s personal problems can effect your bottom line.
That’s why Lionheart Assurance Solutions offers cutting edge employee legal plan benefits designed to help employees keep their minds off their personal problems and ON their jobs. Over 30,000 North American companies of all sizes have added these unique plans to their employee benefits package, and they’ve become some of the most requested employee benefits today.
Not only can an employee legal plan help boost your company’s profits; it may also help to:
At no direct cost to your company, your employees can have access to high quality legal counsel and professional advice that allows them to stay focused on their work and not on personal problems.
And with no obligation on your part, your Lionheart Assurance Solutions professional can show you why over one million families across North America have access to quality legal plan benefits for about the cost of a cup of coffee a day.
That’s why Lionheart Assurance is peace of mind.
For more information, contact your Lionheart Assurance Solutions Agent at (888) 795-1563 or visit www.LionheartAssurance.com.
Disclaimer: Plan availability and coverage varies by state or province. The information contained in this material is for illustrative purposes only and is not a contract. Please remember that only the plan contract can give actual terms, coverage, amounts, conditions and exclusions.
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Business Owners Should Ask,
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Important Questions,
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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. 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.
It is always advisable 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, keep 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 at the Lionheart Assurance Solutions.
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Lionheart Assurance Solutions,
paypal scams
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Eco bags are the perfect solution for your next fundraiser, corporate promotion, or retail addition for customers. There are many different types of bags to choose from, along with many colors, styles, and fully customizable bags that you can adorn with your company logo or other print depending on what you want and need. Eco bags are made of high quality materials and come in various styles, including grocery bags, tote bags, thermal bags, gift bags, and all purpose bags, allowing you to get exactly what you need at prices that you surely can afford. Being environmentally friendly doesn’t have to be expensive.
Eco bags allow you to show people that you care as a business, giving you a much better reputation with your customers and employees. It doesn’t matter whether you need 500 or 5000 bags, because orders can be suited to your size needs, and you can guarantee the best possible prices on reusable eco bags, as well. Reducing waste is critical, and the best way to help out is to offer people reusable options for everyday items that they’re used to disposing of. Considering how many people use bags on a regular basis, providing eco bags to your customers can definitely make an impact.
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As Part of the Lionheart Assurance Scam Prevention Toolkit™
Putting measures into place to avoid an identity theft scam at your business probably does not cross your mind very much, if at all, especially if you consider your business to be a quote-unquote small business; however, complaint boards all over the Internet are packed full of complaints related to identity theft and fraud. If you think crooks only target individuals or large corporations, then think again. In reality, even small businesses can be the target of identity fraud. People can use your business identity or secure your list of customers in order to rip off the public or perform other criminal activities both online and offline. Here are some ways in which you can protect your business and your customers from such scams, frauds and ripoffs.
Getting to know how criminals operate is a good way on how to avoid identity theft fraud at your business. Although the most publicized cases of corporate identity thefts being reported are about crooks stealing customer information from the database of large companies, hacking is not the only threat to your business. In fact, cheating and getting access from inside your system is also a big headache. Some online scam artists will try to rip off your customers by pretending to be representatives of your company or even phish information or identities of your present employees to get to you. There are things that criminals can do to twist the arms of your employees, even your most trusted ones, just to squeeze the information they want regarding you, your customers and your business.
So, what can you do on how to avoid identity theft fraud at your business? Make sure that you invest in good software that will prevent viruses, malwares and spywares from entering your company’s computer database. You need such security measures to ensure that you are protected from outside hackers and ripoffs. In order to protect yourself from the inside, you need to be more careful with the people you hire. Also, take the time to inform your employees about the growing threat of identity theft fraud and tell them how they can detect criminals trying to phish information from them. In addition, it is important that you do not allow personal emails, external messaging applications and other personal activities on your company’s computer network. Perhaps if your employees understand how these things are threatening, they won’t feel as if you are attempting to stifle them personally.
Financial liability is one of the biggest impacts of being a victim of corporate identity theft. To protect yourself from financial repercussions and scams, you should find an assurance agency that will help cover loses and other related expenses in case problems regarding hacking and identity theft arise.
To know more about how to avoid identity theft ripoffs at your business, visit Lionheart Assurance Solutions at http://www.LionheartAssuranceSolutions.com today.
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Do you want to learn about the world and see new places? Do you enjoy taking trips to fun and exciting destinations? How does helping people plan vacations and trips sound for a career?
If this sounds good to you, you should check into the option to start a travel business in your home. You can choose this for a full time career, or if you just want to make some extra money to supplement your income or the income of your family. It doesn’t matter how much work you’re looking for or what your reasons are, because starting a travel business can be good for anyone.
As the population of the world increases, so will the travel industry. It doesn’t matter if people are traveling for business or for pleasure, because the fact of the matter is that people do travel, and they need to travel. Regardless of anything else, you can guarantee a secure career in the travel industry.
You can start a travel business with various companies, as long as you make sure that they’re reputable companies to work with. You should also check and make sure that you find a company with a good training program and an established service so that you get off to a good start.
You shouldn’t start a travel business if you are not able to be organized, self-motivated, and customer-friendly. The customer service is going to be essential to your business, so make sure you’ve got what it takes. If you’re working at home, you’ll also need an office space that is specifically for working and meeting clients.
There are many perks to owning a travel business. You’ll be able to spend more time at home with your family, and you’ll have much more freedom than you would with any out of the house job. And if you need more incentive than that, how do great travel deals and discounts sound?
When you start a travel business, you should learn a little bit about owning, operating, and marketing a business, if you aren’t already familiar with it. Many companies will offer information on these topics included in your training and support, but you still might have to do some on your own. You will have little trouble getting started in business as long as you take the time to research what you’re getting into.
If you want to start a travel business, you should contact KHM Travel today. We have plenty of opportunities available, and offer comprehensive training and support for all of our agents. Check out our website at www.KHMtravel.com, or give us a call at 877-220-9260.