Lionheart Assurance Solutions

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 hand held 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 Solutions Scam Prevention toolkit.

Lionheart Assurance Solutions

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.

Media Contact

Lionheart Assurance Solutions, LP

Michael Hollingsworth

(888) 795-1563 (National)

P.O. Box 38, Hewitt, TX 76643

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.

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.