Are You a Victim of Identity Theft?

An important defense in addressing identity theft is to prevent it by preventing laptop theft. What could be more attractive to a thief than a portable, compact, high value "commodity," that can be readily converted into cash? And to top it off, you're handing over your identiy to boot.

A Laptop-Security-Pro Article
by Paul Wilcox

Identity theft is a popular crime today. But unlike other crimes, the victims often are unaware that a crime has been committed until after the damage to their credit and their name has been done.

If you were to be victimized, would you like to know about it while there was still time to do something about it? Stop identity theft before it starts by being aware of the following dangers.

Criminals often steal identities in order to use someone else's name to apply for a loan or new credit card. If you are contacted by creditors with notice of approval or denial of a line of credit that you never applied for, be sure to get in touch with the company that contacted you and find out exactly what is happening.

An early warning sign of this crime, the advice mentioned above can save you much grief later on, but only if is acted upon swiftly and decisively.

Another possible signal that thieves have targeted you is when, without warning, bills and credit card statements stop arriving at your address. Many criminals, in an effort to stop their victims from realizing what is happening to them financially, will change the mailing address of credit cards they are using fraudulently.

Knowing just when bills should arrive each month can be a big help in preventing identity theft because you will be able to contact the company and ask them why your statement is late arriving. This will help you prevent the crime from getting out of hand and subsequently seriously damaging your credit.

If purchases you did not make appear on credit card statements, contact the company as soon as possible to report such fraudulent activity, since this tends to be a sign of theft.

Not paying close enough attention to monthly bills could cause an individual to miss this sign. Maintain close watch over your financial activity and protect yourself from the damaging effects of a crime that could quite literally ruin your life.

About the Author:

Are you wonder how to safely avoid spam and other internet security threats? Learn how you can stop spam and other threats on the Online Security Toolkit website. Visit http://www.onlinesecuritytoolkit.com for more information.

To keep your identity from being stolen from your laptop and prevent data from being copied, erased, or corrupted when you're not around will require a higher level of laptop security. An excellent first step is to discourage anyone from touching it. To achieve that we would recommend a good quality security alarm or motion detector. These devices will discourage laptop theft, but the most complete solution to laptop data security is encryption and in particular whole of disk encryption.