The Frightening and Lingering Consequences of Identity Theft (and How to Avoid Them)
Identity theft can have broad and far-reaching implications on your
personal, financial, and professional life—immediate ramifications and
longer-term consequences. It’s an incredibly distressing, disruptive,
invasive, and often destructive event that no one should have to deal
with. For those unfamiliar with the nightmare of identity theft, the
following describes some of the ways in which it can continue to disrupt
and even sabotage a victim’s life well after the event itself. The good
news is that there are tools and strategies you can use to increase
your privacy and remove personal information from Google that could otherwise be used by identity thieves.
The Money Lost and Credit Consequences
No doubt the most common, well-known, and immediately detrimental consequence of having your identity stolen is the financial cost. Identity thieves have a number of underhanded strategies they use to steal from you, including:
● Accessing and emptying checking and savings accounts.
● Opening accounts to move money to and overdraft.
● Running up charges on credit cards and making online purchases in your name.
● Stealing from retirement savings.
● Taking out loans in your name.
● Manipulating and stealing from investment accounts.
Identity theft and these actions can threaten all of your assets, directly and indirectly. In addition to the immediate financial costs, many of these events can negatively impact your credit score, affecting your ability to access loans and credit. Removing these events from your credit score can be very difficult and paying professionals to clean up the mess can prove an additional expense.
The Time Lost to Fixing Identity Theft
Your time can be at least as valuable as your financial assets. Undoing the damage done by an identity thief can mean dozens of hours of work, hassle, and frustration. It often involves working with your bank and other financial institutions, credit card companies, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration if your social security number was compromised. You may need professional legal and financial or tax assistance as well. You should be able to spend your free time doing other things—not dealing with identity theft.
Emotional Consequences and Reputation Damage
Learning how to remove personal information from Google searches can save you a whole lot of grief if you’re able to do so and avoid having identity thieves use this information to steal your identity in the first place. But if you can’t prevent it and the damage has been done, there’s another cost in addition to financial and time: emotional cost. As bad as the anger and frustration can be, the feeling of personal violation might be worse. It’s a deeply harrowing feeling and can be made worse if an identity theft impersonated you for the purposes of defrauding friends, family, or coworkers. Embarrassment and injury to your reputation are a real possibility with long-term ramifications, which can threaten your relationships, employment status, and credit.
Avoiding Identity Theft
Unfortunately, identity thieves tend to be tech-savvy and haunt the dark web, making identification extremely difficult. They’re extremely good at being anonymous, so it’s important to take precautions to protect your privacy. A lot of those involve basic security and common-sense use of the internet. Be extremely careful when using social media. Keep your settings as private as possible on social media platforms, do not post personal information, and erase any social media profiles you’re not using (so they can’t be used against you).
Using password security best practices is always crucial. For example, never base your passwords on personal information such as names of pets or family members or dates with personal relevance. The more random a password is, and the longer it is, in general, the harder it is to crack. The idea is that you want to make sure an identity thief can’t guess your password based on information about you, because using tools to aggregate information about you and guess a series of likely password combinations is a lot easier than having to “brute force” their way through a randomized password. Should they choose a brute force strategy, then length and randomness are your allies there too.
Unfortunately, information about you online isn’t limited to what you post on social media. Much of the information that identity thieves exploit can be found in the databases of data broker sites. Fortunately, contracting with a company that contacts data broker sites and requests an information opt-out on your behalf can make you considerably less at risk of identity theft by removing the information that thieves use to try and steal your identity in the first place.
About DeleteMe
DeleteMe is a standard-setting innovator within the data privacy and online security industry. Headquartered in Boston, DeleteMe’s reputation for efficient, effective internet security strategies has been established by their expert privacy team’s proprietary technology and cutting-edge innovation. Since their founding, DeleteMe has accomplished over 10 million successful consumer opt-outs. To ensure superior data security and privacy through personal information removal from Whitepages and 30-plus other data broker sites, choose DeleteMe. A DeleteMe subscription will make sure your personal information stays private year-round.
Learn about everything DeleteMe can do for your privacy and security, at Joindeleteme.com
The Money Lost and Credit Consequences
No doubt the most common, well-known, and immediately detrimental consequence of having your identity stolen is the financial cost. Identity thieves have a number of underhanded strategies they use to steal from you, including:
● Accessing and emptying checking and savings accounts.
● Opening accounts to move money to and overdraft.
● Running up charges on credit cards and making online purchases in your name.
● Stealing from retirement savings.
● Taking out loans in your name.
● Manipulating and stealing from investment accounts.
Identity theft and these actions can threaten all of your assets, directly and indirectly. In addition to the immediate financial costs, many of these events can negatively impact your credit score, affecting your ability to access loans and credit. Removing these events from your credit score can be very difficult and paying professionals to clean up the mess can prove an additional expense.
The Time Lost to Fixing Identity Theft
Your time can be at least as valuable as your financial assets. Undoing the damage done by an identity thief can mean dozens of hours of work, hassle, and frustration. It often involves working with your bank and other financial institutions, credit card companies, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration if your social security number was compromised. You may need professional legal and financial or tax assistance as well. You should be able to spend your free time doing other things—not dealing with identity theft.
Emotional Consequences and Reputation Damage
Learning how to remove personal information from Google searches can save you a whole lot of grief if you’re able to do so and avoid having identity thieves use this information to steal your identity in the first place. But if you can’t prevent it and the damage has been done, there’s another cost in addition to financial and time: emotional cost. As bad as the anger and frustration can be, the feeling of personal violation might be worse. It’s a deeply harrowing feeling and can be made worse if an identity theft impersonated you for the purposes of defrauding friends, family, or coworkers. Embarrassment and injury to your reputation are a real possibility with long-term ramifications, which can threaten your relationships, employment status, and credit.
Avoiding Identity Theft
Unfortunately, identity thieves tend to be tech-savvy and haunt the dark web, making identification extremely difficult. They’re extremely good at being anonymous, so it’s important to take precautions to protect your privacy. A lot of those involve basic security and common-sense use of the internet. Be extremely careful when using social media. Keep your settings as private as possible on social media platforms, do not post personal information, and erase any social media profiles you’re not using (so they can’t be used against you).
Using password security best practices is always crucial. For example, never base your passwords on personal information such as names of pets or family members or dates with personal relevance. The more random a password is, and the longer it is, in general, the harder it is to crack. The idea is that you want to make sure an identity thief can’t guess your password based on information about you, because using tools to aggregate information about you and guess a series of likely password combinations is a lot easier than having to “brute force” their way through a randomized password. Should they choose a brute force strategy, then length and randomness are your allies there too.
Unfortunately, information about you online isn’t limited to what you post on social media. Much of the information that identity thieves exploit can be found in the databases of data broker sites. Fortunately, contracting with a company that contacts data broker sites and requests an information opt-out on your behalf can make you considerably less at risk of identity theft by removing the information that thieves use to try and steal your identity in the first place.
About DeleteMe
DeleteMe is a standard-setting innovator within the data privacy and online security industry. Headquartered in Boston, DeleteMe’s reputation for efficient, effective internet security strategies has been established by their expert privacy team’s proprietary technology and cutting-edge innovation. Since their founding, DeleteMe has accomplished over 10 million successful consumer opt-outs. To ensure superior data security and privacy through personal information removal from Whitepages and 30-plus other data broker sites, choose DeleteMe. A DeleteMe subscription will make sure your personal information stays private year-round.
Learn about everything DeleteMe can do for your privacy and security, at Joindeleteme.com
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