Identity Theft

This is one of those subjects you think will never happen to you.  I did.  Then two years ago, my bank card number was stolen and used to buy Coach purses, hotels, and taxi service in the UK and a charitable donation in the United States (making themselves feel better for draining my account I guess).  It was stressful, aggravating, and beyond maddening to have no money left.  I became real friendly with my bank at that point...spent a lot of time there getting things figured out.

I never thought about identity theft protection prior to that.  I didn't leave my credit cards laying out; they weren't physically stolen.  I thought I had to be careless for identity fraud to happen to me.  Then my bank debit card was used to provide a bit of fun for somebody else.  It was enough to make me cry.  We have six kids - we couldn't afford to have our money tied up in an identity fraud investigation!

If you're worried about it happening to you, there is a company called IdentityHawk that can help stop fraud before you become a victim of it.  In this economy, who can afford to have their identity stolen and credit rating affected? Identity fraud can happen to you.  It happened to this small-town soccer mom!

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Credit Freeze Protects You From ID Theft

Did you know that you can protect your credit by putting a credit freeze on your information at the credit reporting agencies? I had no idea! It's amazing the wealth of information you can find on the Internet on a Sunday afternoon when you're bored, lol.

Anyway, back to credit freezes. This prevents just anybody from checking your credit or getting credit in your name (identity theft) without your permission (generally a pin number from what I've read). There may be fees involved in doing this (or unfreezing your account) and not all states allow it yet. This may change if the federal government provide a national standard which will preempt state laws.

For more information, check out the Consumers Union or FinancialPrivacyNow.org.

*this is not a sponsored post.

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Data Destruction

Can you imagine what would happen if all of the confidential information left behind on hard drives at all the attorneys (solicitors in other parts of the world) who handle family law cases, such as ours, were stolen? Even our children's information, as part of a family law case, would be in jeopardy! What happens when attorneys throw obsolete computers away? Without hard disc data destruction, the potential for identity theft is huge! Not just attorneys but other businesses such as corporations and insurance companies carry quite a bit of personal data for quite a lot of people.

One way to ensure the destruction of this data is to clean the data from hard drives. It takes a specialized software in order to do this and not leave remnants behind that a general lay person wouldn't realize but identity thieves would.

Another option is the use of industrial shredders. I am not talking about the small paper shredders we can buy anywhere. Industrial shredders can not only shred hard drives but the back up tapes and cds we've used to back up those hard drives.

Finally, a third option for destroying personal data is to put this hardware into a furnace where they are smelted. This ultimately destroys any chance for an identity thief to get hold of them.

Enviro Friendly Computing, Ltd. does all of this and they do it "green" which means they do business with the least amount of impact on the environment within the computer world. In my world, it means recycling plastics, glass, and paper which we do here at home and our children's school. In their world, it means reducing waste, recycling, and reusing by supplying refurbished computers, digitalising data to reduce paper use, collecting empty toners, and more.

It's important for businesses to take the initiative to operate with the least impact on the environment as they can have a huge influence on our supply of natural resources. Enviro Friendly Computing, Ltd. conducts business in a responsible manner and cares about the environment.

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