Many people nowadays live in abject fear of the concept of identity theft. Reading article after article online about it and then seeing all of the news stories regarding people whose lives have been destroyed by it can definitely have that effect on a person's psyche. People are afraid to reply to e-mails or give out any information online and this in turn leads them to become closed off from the exceptionally positive aspects of the internet that might do them a lot of good.

Well, if you are one of these people, you do not have to live in fear anymore. Here are seven tips that, if followed to the letter, will make you immune to having your identity stolen.

Tip #1: Make sure that you download and use it instead of Internet Explorer to surf the internet. There are a number of excellent anti-identity theft add-ons that you can use with FireFox and because it is not mainstream like Internet Explorer, there are less identity theft programs that people can use against people that use the FireFox browsers. Examples of good add-ons to install include : KeyScrambler , AdblockPlus , PasswordMaker . There are many more however and you should thoroughly examine what FireFox has available.

Tip #2: Sensitive information should be stored using only the best pieces of software available. When you give out information over the phone or in person, naturally you are going to make sure that the information is being transferred in a secure manner. This isn't always possible for you to do online so using a trusted piece of software to help you is a very good idea.

TrueCrypt is a free piece of software that will help you with this. DriveCrypt costs money ($81 to be exact) but at the same time offers much more functionality and many more options; the choice is yours, but make sure you use at least one of these two.

Tip #3: As much as possible, try to make sure that you copy and paste your information into a text file and then transfer that to the online form; this negates the use of keylogger software.

Tip #4: The biggest problems for a number of people when it comes to this issue are the online viruses, Trojans and spyware that can be installed on a person's computer. Preventing these is the single most important thing you can do in preventing yourself from succumbing to identity theft.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 is an excellent program to allow you to guard yourself against virus attacks  and if you use that combined with a spyware program such as Spysweeper, you will be able to create a strong bulwark against these foreign intrusions.

Tip #5: Be very careful when dealing with pirated software; pirated software is famous for containing things like Trojans.

Tip #6: Make sure that any file you use (such as an .exe file) has been checked for viruses. You can either do this with your virus checking program (Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 or whatever program you happen to use) or online at Virustotal

Tip #7: Make sure that the form you are typing your information into is the same form as the one used by the company you are trying to liaise with. If necessary use a bookmark or even manually type it into the address bar to make sure you get it right.

TrackBack URI for this entry