Identity theft is one of the fastest growing white collar crimes costing businesses and individuals billions of dollars each year. One of the easier methods used to steal someone’s identity is to obtain paper documents that have personal and financial information printed on them. This can include: old tax returns, bank statements, credit card statements, contracts, utility bills, receipts, and much more. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to prevent identify theft. It just takes implementing a number of important protection measures for both hard copy document protection and online security protection. Below is a list of tips on how to avoid identity theft:

Document Shredding Services: Preventing identity theft by using the services of a document shredding company is vital to keeping sensitive documents out of the hands of criminals. It is essential to enlist the services of a document destroying company to permanently destroy all of your sensitive documents as soon as they are no longer needed for record-keeping or for compliance purposes to keep the documents out of the hands of criminals. The shredding services include either picking up the documents and taking them to the shredding facility to be shredded, or a truck is sent to the place of business where the documents will be destroyed on-site using a document shredding machine that is on the truck. The documents are safely collected and shredded with no chance of being viewed or stolen by another party for the purpose of identity theft. Upon completion, the document shredding company will send a certificate of destruction which is legal confirmation that the documents were permanently destroyed.

Review Credit Card and Bank Fraud Policies: Check with your financial and banking institutions to see if they have the technology that automatically detects potential fraudulent activity or is it up to the customer to detect and report fraudulent activity.

Online Phishing Scams: It is essential to delete any emails that appear to be phishing scams. A common phishing scam is when the fraudster send an email that looks like it came from an actual bank. They will request that you click a link to update some information on your account. Never follow those links. As well, report any phishing scam emails to your financial institution.

Proper Password Protection: Create passwords that would be impossible for someone to guess. Don’t use something like your birth date, last name…etc. Create a strong password that is hard to crack. If you use the same password for everything, you are putting all of your accounts at great risk. Use different passwords for different sites and change them regularly.

Today, identity thieves thrive on the collection of personal and financial information of individuals and businesses. It is important to take the proper security measures to prevent identity theft, particularly for a business as it can be financially devastating. They could lose millions in sales and millions in lawsuits if they are found liable for the data theft. It is now vital that businesses safeguard their sensitive data, which includes their safe disposal. Document shredding services is an effective way to keep sensitive documents out of the hands of identity thieves.

Author Bio: Secure on-site paper shredding and document shredding services. Leading document shredding services; certified by the National Association for Information Destruction.

Category: Advice
Keywords: document shredding, shredding services, paper shreding, document management, information management,