Identity Theft Check

As the mobile phone market expands and the technology becomes more sophisticated, so will the potential of identity theft and other security issues.

As you may be aware, the iPhone is now a very popular phone throughout the world taking a large market share away from other brands.

This one along with others including Blackberrys and Googles own phone have the ability to surf the internet using modern browsers much like anyones laptop or PC.

This in turn opens up a number of security issues and flaws much like the battle Internet Explorer goes through with hackers and scammers trying to part with your money.

Unfortently, virus software and other techniques aren’t available for these phones and the reliance on the companys own software for safety become paramount.

The best advice to stay safe whilst online using these is to remember, much like the previous article that public wifi networks aren’t to be trusted and to keep your phones software upto date.

Identity theft is a very large growing concern in today’s world. Below I have compiled a short list of preventative measures that can be taken to help keep your personal identifiable information safe.

Home, work or laptop computer – most people would not consider a personal computer as a security risk, but as soon as the computer is connected to the internet the computer becomes venerable to attack. The best way to combat this is to install hi-level security software that will protect against hackers and Trojans ECT. Another good way to help prevent security vulnerabilities is not to store hi-risk information such as bank details, scanned utility bills ECT on the computer as this information is potentially accessible to hackers and identity thieves.

Mobile phones – mobile phones have come a long way since they were just that “phones”. Today most mobile phones have some kind of data storage facilities in the form of taking notes, document editing ECT. It’s always best to never to store personal identifiable information into mobile phones as if these are lost or stolen you could be paying out more than just for the replacement of the phone.

Personal space – beware of your surroundings and who is listening in on convocations in busy environments such as shopping centers, as the person standing next in the queue could wish to steal your identity.

There is thousands of honest ecommerce website around on the internet, all trying to sell us products and services of all kinds. But with all these honest sites there are quite a few dishonest sites too. So how can you tell between the honest and dishonest sites?
Security: always check the URL of the page to see if its https secured before entering in any credit card information, this can also be checked by looking for the “padlock” image in the bottom information bar of the browser.
E-mails: even though this is not a strict rule, never enter your credit card information into a site that you got to from an e-mail link that you haven’t signed up to. This is not always the case as a site may have sent you an affiliate link that is perfectly legitimate.
Cloned sites: these are a little more difficult to distinguish from, as the sites usually are an exact copy of a legitimate site just for the sole purpose of steeling your credit card and banking information. Although in most cases i have come across there are a few slight differences that you can look at to tell them apart. The URL is one of the most common, in most cases this will differ from the actual URL of the original site. Another way to tell is poor design work, this is where the site has been cloned from the original and then edited without really knowing what they were doing as the end result is a poor copy with things missing or images stretched out of shape.
Also remember when entering in card information into a site, the site in question should never ask you to provide banking passwords, memorable words, pass codes or pin numbers ECT so never give them out. Install antivirus and anti-spyware software to prevent sites installing backdoor key-loggers, and Trojans. And always remember if the site doesn’t look legitimate then don’t buy or provide personal information to it.