Identity Theft Protection | The Millionaire Nurse Blog

Posts Tagged ‘identity theft protection’

Identity Theft-By Your Kid?

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Identity Theft-by your 10 year old?

Kevin Tofel, at GigaOm has written a post about identity theft. After a good bit of hand-wringing, and probably 4 letter words- he found out the unexpected charges were by one of his children. Please check out the post for details.

It seems one of his kids was ordering goldfish food for a free Goldfish app/game for their iPod. The child didn’t know there was a charge for all that fish food/bowl cleaner, etc.

Of course good ol Dad, in the face of all the hoopla about hacking at the iTunes store, assumed he’d been hacked-and had the charges reversed, password changed, and all those things you do when you think someone has scammed your account.

I think the money/ID theft lessons he and his kid learned are worth repeating here:

Don’t leave an open credit card on your accounts. Most of us are guilty of this, with the excuse it saves time. But how much time will you spend trying to get your money back when someone does hack into your account.
Make sure you teach your children that even “free” online games, can have hidden in-app charges. (nothin in life is free!)
Check out the safety options available at the iTunes store, to keep minors from making un-authorized charges.

Reader Questions:

Do you allow your children access to your iTunes store account?

Do they have their own account, and if so, how do you fund it?

Tags: identity theft protection, iTunes account hacking, preventing identity theft, protecting your account
Posted in personal finance | 2 Comments »

Scam, Spam, Phishing/Thank you Ma’m:How Millionaire Nurses Protect Themselves

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Spam, and Phishing scams. They are becoming harder to spot, and cost our country billions in lost cash, and no telling how many hours of lost time trying to undo the damage done by identity theft.

My wife got a notice recently about a purchase of an I-Pod in London. Of course, we hadn’t been to London, or bought an I-Pod. So, we get to spend an hour online with paypal straightening that out. Not how you want to spend an evening….. Coulda been a lot worse, than an I-pod though, huh.

The Money Ning site has a great post on 9 ways to protect yourself.

So what are Millionaire Nurses doing to protect themselves. Well let’s think about birth control for a minute. We will compare birth control and identity theft prevention:

Abstinence: While abstinence always works for birth control, never having sex just doesn’t sound like a great option to most people. Not participating in cyber-space may seem like a good option too. Until you remember identity theft occurred well before the Internet. Credit card numbers can be ripped off at the gas station, restaurants, or any retail establishment. So unless you never venture from your home, have no credit cards, or telephone then abstinence ain’t the answer…..

Barrier protection: Condoms, diaphragms work better than nothing. So how do you set up barriers to ID theft-by paying attention. Use common sense about not giving away personal information except to trusted sources.

Birth control thru modern chemistry: Oral contraceptives, Depo-provera, and Mirena IUD all depend on hormone chemicals to prevent pregnancy. So do I have a chemical ID theft agent-well nooooo. But I can buy protection such as Zander’s product, that is recommended by Dave Ramsey. Lifelock is another highly advertised identity theft prevention/detection agent.

So what would be my top seven recommendations to prevent ID theft:

Never give personal information when asked by email or phone, except by going directly to the source-do not click a link on an email. And when you get calls, you hang up and call your known agent/banker/credit card company-don’t assume the person calling you is legit-if they are, they will understand your efforts at protecting yourself.
Put a no credit offer lock on the credit agencies-see this post for the how to’s.
photo by Zevotron
Use a shredder on all documents that you throw away.
Change your passwords periodically, and keep them hidden.
Limit your potential damage-if you have one credit card, one call stops the damage-if you have 20, well, good luck with that!
Use one of the ID theft agencies above, for peace of mind.
Don’t go to websites that are shaky-don’t be tempted by the free gift offers, the soft-porn/titillating ads, the ‘I have to get money out of the country” scams that must work as they show up daily. Use a scam/spam/phishing protector on your email program, and delete, delete, delete…..If it sounds too good to be true, it is…

So go forth and be careful out there. And if you have been the victim of phishing, or have Identity Theft questions, let us hear from you.

Housekeeping:

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