Lionheart Assurance Solutions

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.

Most of us carry medical insurance to cover unforeseen problems, as long as we can afford it. Our insurance means we have a unique medical identity, including our health histories, personal information, bills paid, what we pay for insurance and what our account will pay for. This can be a real problem if someone decides to steal that medical identity.

It’s a fact – someone else who gets your insurance number and personal information can use them to pay for their own medical expenses. This includes drugs, surgery, expensive treatments and more. Medical records and information may be falsified and new ones created. If the thief gets away with this, you could end up being charged for what your insurance won’t pay, or discover that your legitimate problems aren’t covered anymore. You’ve become a victim of medical identity theft without even knowing it.

It can be extremely difficult to prove that your identity has been stolen in this way, however. After all, the information and records are on computers in hospitals and insurance agencies all over. Sometimes, people even get the help of a doctor or other medical professional to commit this kind of fraud. That’s why it’s so important to be ready for it.

The Possible Consequences

The biggest impact of medical identity theft is financial. Victims of this kind of theft have credit problems, may have to deal with debt collectors, and might have trouble getting a job. They may also have trouble dealing with the fake entries in their medical identity. After all, if a new insurer believes you’ve had treatment for an illness you haven’t had, they may consider it to be a pre-existing condition. Even if you check your credit report on a regular basis, it may be hard to see the problem.

What Can You Do

Recovering your medical identity under current law is difficult. Since medical records are secret, it can take a long time to find out what happened. Ideally, you should select an insurance company that has transparency of records (to you) and regularly updates credit reports. There are also a number of websites you can check to find out other possible actions.

Most of the time, people who suffer from this kind of theft have a hard time recovering. Since they don’t have the right to change their own medical files, and since information is hard to get to, it may never be fixed. This is why anyone with medical insurance should make sure their credit information and all other data from the insurance company is correct. Lionheart Assurance Solutions recommends that you keep track of your paid bills and keep a close eye on your personal data to reduce your chances of becoming a victim.

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.

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.