Today’s society is a convenience driven society that each of us has become comfortable with. Unfortunately, convenience and comfort can often give us a false sense of security that exposes us to increased risks of becoming the victims of Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud.

One of those comforts is the luxury to sit in a restaurant and have our server take our credit card and bill to the register to facilitate payment. For the most part waiters and waitresses are some of the hardest working and most integral members of the service industry.

Unfortunately though, there are a significant number of them that carry “electronic skimmers” in their aprons and pockets allowing them the ability to electronically steal the information that is concealed in the magnetic strip of your credit card.

Within hours and in some cases even minutes your information is downloaded into a computer and placed on the magnetic strip of a cloned credit card that contains your billing information. The newly created card with your information is then sold on the “black market” and used until it reaches the maximum charge limit.

I am often asked during seminars how we can stop or at least prevent ourselves from becoming victims of this type of criminal activity. One answer is to always accompany the waitress/waiter to the cash register and maintain absolute control of your credit card.

There should be nothing embarrassing about doing this as each of us has the right and privilege of protecting ourselves from identity thieves and credit card fraud. Another significant step toward protecting yourself from credit card skimming is to routinely review your credit card billing statement to make sure that all the charges are the result of legitimate activity.

As with all forms of Identity Theft, education, awareness, and early recognition are vital keys to protecting your good name.

Wayne Ivey
27 Year law Enforcement Veteran
Identity Theft Consultant

Medical identity theft, by definition, is what results when a thief steals someone else’s social security number or health insurance information in order to obtain medical benefits of their own, particularly in the form of hospital visits and prescription drugs. The two facets of medical identity theft involve financial breaches of security and healthcare fraud. Long-term detrimental effects can easily result from this increasingly prevalent type of identity theft.

Medical identity theft is not as easy to detect or reverse as are the more common forms of identity fraud. This type of identity theft has left victims with tainted health records, medical histories, and diagnoses. Victims may receive bills for medications, tests and even surgeries that they never had done. In order to ensure your own adequate identity theft protection, always be on the look out for medical service bills, records and notations that are not and were never applicable to your own history. If at any time you receive a bill for a service you never received, or you’re asked questions regarding an unknown medical condition, you’ve probably been victimized. Some victims of medical identity theft have even received faulty blood transfusions due to their records indicating the wrong blood type. So not only can this crime ruin your credit, it can also be potentially life-threatening.

Thieves often fail to pay their shares of insurance deductibles and co-pays, leaving their victims to receive credit reports detailing unrecognizable medical debts. Having a working knowledge of identity theft prevention techniques will help you protect yourself from this damaging crime. It is estimated that 1 in 6 Americans don’t have insurance, making it very tempting for some people to engage in medical identity theft, especially when emergency situations arise. If, heaven forbid, someone uses your personal data in an emergency care facility, they are very likely to get away with it as these facilities cannot refuse care and are less likely to catch the error in the first place.

To date, there are no government statistics as to the number of medical identity fraud cases occurring annually in the United States, but insurance providers and hospitals agree that this type of theft is presenting itself more and more. Approximately 250,000 Americans have been victims of medical identity theft thus far, according to the World Privacy Forum. If you think your medical records and insurance data are safe, never underestimate a thief’s ability to get their hands on your information. And because insurance companies share patient information, should you decide to switch to another provider in the future, your tarnished medical history just might follow you.

Should a medical identity thief ever use your good name to seek treatment, you could be refused insurance coverage later–depending on the treatment they sought. It’s no secret that insurance agencies can and will refuse coverage to people with histories of certain drug use or pre-existing conditions.

Here are a few medical identity theft protection tips for you and your loved ones to keep in mind:

• Any notices from your insurance carrier should be opened immediately.
• If you’re ever informed of or billed for treatment you didn’t receive, dispute it right away.
• Always shred these documents before throwing them in the trash.
• Be diligent about checking your credit report and dispute any unknown medical accounts with credit reporting agencies, as well as your insurance company.
• If you receive mail from a doctor’s office or hospital where you haven’t been a patient, don’t just assume it’s junk. Open these immediately, as they could be bills for services to which you weren’t privy.
• Let credit agencies know so they can put fraud alerts on your file. Also let your insurance company know right away.

If you lead a hectic lifestyle and don’t especially want to spend your free time placing fraud alerts, ordering credit reports, opting out of junk mailing lists, and can’t fathom spending months or years trying to restore your identity if stolen, then consider doing what I did…enroll in LifeLock and turn the burden of protecting your life over to them!

~ Denise Richardson, Author of Give Me Back My Credit

In this holiday season, along with stuffing the turkey for an annual Thanksgiving meal, what else might be stuffed? Our wallets. With the holiday season looming on the horizon and sales galore barreling towards us, what else are we to do but shop?

As we shop the sales, identity thieves are shopping for our lives. Much like we pick out the best deals and steals during holiday sales, identity thieves are also shopping for the best deals. For an identity thief, the ultimate ‘steal’ is a purse or wallet. Why? Our wallets and purses contain a plethora of personal information just ripe for the picking. Think about it, most of our wallets and purses contain an assortment of items from credit cards and sippy-cups to social security cards, checkbooks, and the occasional family photo. If you were in the business of shopping for identities, wouldn’t you want a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all your identity theft needs? Of course you would. Wallets and purses provide identity thieves with just that service. A purse or wallet can contain our life. If a thief were to acquire our purse or wallet, besides the occasional crumpled gum wrapper or receipt, they would have access to our driver’s license, credit cards, bank account information, checkbook, social security number, insurance information and perhaps even information about our children and their identities.

How do we protect ourselves? With all the ‘stuff’ we carry, do we each know EXACTLY what is actually in our possession at any one time? Probably not. Therefore, it seems to be a great time, not only to inventory what we each carry, but to identify those items that are unnecessary for day to day transport on our person. Here are some tips to keep in mind while cleaning:

• Do not carry your Social Security Card
• Do not carry birth certificates or passports (or copies of them)
• Only carry one or two credit cards
• Carry minimal amounts of cash
• Make copies of every card you carry and keep the cards you’re not carrying, along with the copies of the cards you do carry, in a safety deposit box, or locked filing cabinet

For the simple fact that an identity can be stolen easily and quickly with the right information, and the fact that ALL that personal information can be acquired through a purse or wallet, wouldn’t it make sense to protect and guard that valuable information? Sure it would. However, even when we’ve done our best to keep our personal information personal, sometimes our information gets stolen anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would restore all our personal identification items and credit cards as if nothing had ever happened? Of course! That’s what WalletLock is for. On top of the holiday stress and making sure Aunt Betty doesn’t have to sit next to cousin Jerry at Thanksgiving, or that the turkey will come out alright, you don’t need to deal with an identity theft issue too. WalletLock will go the extra mile, even over the river and through the woods, to take care of your identity restoration process and help make Thanksgiving a little more thankful this year! Thanks LifeLock!

~Christina Hall (Miss New Mexico 2006)

Did you know that if you type your phone number into Google it spits out your name and address? With just a few clicks, someone can find not only your phone number and address but also your birth date, relative’s names and addresses, home value and more. Isn’t that just a little bit scary? It is to me.

The reality is we live in an information world. You can find the answer to pretty much any question you have, immediately. The other night my friends and I were having a political discussion and no one could remember Michael Dukakis’ running mate in 1988. One quick search on the Wikipanion app on my iPhone and I had the answer (Lloyd Bentson). It took about a minute.

The Internet has changed our lives for the better I think. Having unlimited information at your fingertips at all times is a powerful thing. Access to news events from around the globe in real time gives us a better world-view and more informed opinions. The flipside to this unlimited information resource however are the people that exploit it for personal gain.

Here’s the reality, no matter what steps you take to protect your personal information, it’s out there. A regular person can find out a lot about you by Googling around for a few minutes. Just think what professional identity thieves can do. So you have a choice to make. You can do your best to hide from the thieves and hackers and keep your money under your mattress instead of in a bank account, pay for everything in cash, not shop online or dine out and deliver all your own mail. Or you can get the peace of mind from LifeLock that no matter what happens to your information they’ve got your back….a million times over.

I just bought a new shirt online that was delivered in the mail today so I think I’ll wear it out to dinner tonight to my favorite restaurant. Oh, and I’ll need to stop by my bank’s ATM to get some cash. Even though I’ll pay for dinner with one of my credit cards, I’ll need some money to pay for a cab.

- Barrington Media Group (LifeLock’s radio media buyer)