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Protect Your Identity Today with These Simple Tips
Each year millions of Americans are finding themselves victims of identity theft. For some, it can take years to fix the damage done and repair their credit score and financial reputation. The losses of money, financial opportunities or loan opportunities can be devastating.

For most of these victims, it can take a long time before they even realize that their credit or reputation has been hijacked. For some people, they have to be notified by their credit card company of suspicious activity or they simply fill out an application for a loan and are denied. Knowing that they have a credit score of 710 and a perfect payment record, these consumers cannot realize why they would be denied for any credit application until they contact the credit bureaus to find out.

It is hard to understand at first how devastating identity theft can be to one's finances, interest rates and credit score. There are three different credit reporting agencies to clear up information with, verify true identity and establish true from false on your reports. This is a long and drawn out process that can take some people months or years to finish.

Why not protect yourself from the identity thiefs out there and use preventative measures to protect yourself now?

PROTECT YOUR IDENTITY AND FINANCES NOW:
1. Make and safely store a list of financial institutions that you have accounts with. List the phone number, contact information and your account number for easy access. Do not list any secret passcodes, simply the contact information for the financial institutions you do business with. This can be used quickly and easily were your information to be lost or stolen and you needed to place notifications out.

2. Use your credit cards wisely. For personal expenses, use only one credit card, ONLY ONE people. Use one card for business expenditures or if business expenses require more, simply categorize each card to one type of work for easier tracking. This way you can monitor your accounts weekly and quickly.

3. Use a seperate email for personal and business use and also use secure and locked mail boxes for receiving your mail.

4. Ignore email solicitations for personal information and never give out any info, (ex: social security, pin numbers, etc.) via email solicitation. Always go directly to the website by typing in the address to verify the security of the site.

5. Never print any information on your checks expect your address, first intial only and last name.

6. ON the back of your credit cards where signature is required, simply write "CHECK ID" instead of signing to guarantee the checker will pay attention.

7. Don't use a "debit" mastercard or visa card to make purchases that come directly from your bank account. Recovering funds that have been fradulently taken from your account can be extremely difficult and a much harder process than credit card chargebacks.

8. Use a safe with a secure storage area to store all bank statements, passports, and credit cards.

9. Don't EVER give out personal information such as drivers license, social security or date of birth to anyone unless YOU know they are secure and reputable and have a reason to request the information.

10. Establish an initial fraud alert on your credit report if you feel you want complete protection from identity thiefs and are concerned about your finances. Find out more information and you can file a intial fraud alert with all three credit agencies.

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CREDIT SECRETS BIBLE

Author: Amy Pedersen, is penned as Your Credit Score Secrets featured Credit Insider whose articles provide insider tips and insightful knowledge of the credit industry. Her article topics range from the nature of credit reports to the underlying problems facing credit scoring and the laws which support credit report repair done by the average person.