I was a victim of identy theft recently with a credit card, but fortunately the credit card issuer (my credit union) had a policy of checking with me on suspicious purchases. My theft occured, as best I can figure out, at a high upscale restaurant.

Fortunately my SSAN has not been stolen as that would have far more serious impact. I am now looking into one of the identiy theft protection services.

I am a mature, careful adult. I guard against theft to the best of my ability, but I add this post to underscore the fact this CAN happen to anyone.

The one thing I recomend is using strong passwords, and updating your passwords frequently.

This can be a pain, but there are some ways to make it less painful. Microsoft has a great device that reads your finger print and enters your password for you so that you don’t have to remember or type your new strong passwords.

For strong passwords, I thing they should be at least 10 characters long, have UPPER CASE, lower case, at least 1 number, and at least 1 symbol such as $ or %. Better still, if you are using the fingerprint reader, make your password an entire phrase such as Thi$ !s My $trong P@$$word. The likely hood of anyone guessing such a password or using brute force attacks to figure out your password is very slim.

Also, when creating profiles, I recommend always writing a disclaimer that this is your only such profile immediately upon creating your profile. Enter the current date as part of the disclaimer. This way, unless the person who is copying your profile does it the same day, they won’t be able to copy your disclamer because the date they joined will not match yours.

I’d love to discuss this issue further. Please feel free to email me with your ideas.

Thanks,
Steve Warshaw - Executive Contributor
http://www.topinternetguides.com

steve@topinternetguides.com