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| Wealthy? You’re a Prime Candidate for Identity Theft |
you enjoy tennis, skiing and jetting off on international vacations, you’re more likely to become the victim of identity theft. A new study by national credit bureau Experian found that identity thieves usually search for the wealthiest of consumers to fraud. These consumers are the ones who enjoy, and use their credit cards to purchase, tennis lessons, skiing trips and international vacations. According to Experian’s research, these wealthy victims of identity theft tend to live in and around bigger cities, have college diplomas or advanced degrees and are usually married. If you are fortunate enough to be affluent, you need to take the steps necessary to protect yourself from identity theft.
Trusting Those Around You
The Experian report said that because affluent households often have domestic help and service people, they are more frequent targets of identity theft. This paid help has easy access to these affluent homeowners’ mail, and all the credit-card offers and other junk mail that makes identity theft possible. The key to preventing identity theft is to make sure that hired help does not have easy access to mail. It helps, too, to only hire help that you trust. Affluent homeowners should also be careful to shred their junk mail. They should also take steps to lessen the amount of junk mail that they receive; they can request that companies stop sending them credit-card offers and other potentially dangerous junk mail.
Credit Monitoring
The affluent can also protect themselves by enrolling in credit-monitoring services. These services, which are available from the national credit bureaus Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, will alert you when unusual purchases are made with your credit cards. These services usually cost money. But the cost is usually far outweighed by the positive: The affluent can rest easy knowing that any odd activity with their credit cards will be flagged and reported. This can help them put a stop to any unauthorized purchases before identity thieves are able to run up even more buys.
Complete Protection Impossible
The Experian report is a bit chilling; if even the most affluent consumers can be victims of identity theft, what does that say about everyone else? The truth is, it’s impossible to protect yourself completely from identity theft. But if you take the proper precautions – not giving away personal information through the Internet, limiting the amount of junk mail that arrives in your mailbox each day – you can at least decrease the odds that an identity thief will target you. |
| Author: richhoward |
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