There are few things worse in life than waking up one day to find that your identity is not just your own, in fact, someone else has decided they want to be you as well. They have stolen your identity and intend to make the most of it, to your own detriment. The best defense against identity theft is to know what you can do to prevent it in the first place. You are never really, out of the woods, but you can take steps that will help you prevent and catch identity theft, if it were to occur.

One great way to start protecting yourself is with LifeLock. LifeLock is a revolutionary program that helps protect you, your name, and your social security number from identity thieves. How does this work? Well, essentially the program is designed to work with your credit report. We all know that when you (or someone pretending to be you) apply for any type of credit, the credit bureaus will be the first ones contacted to see where your credit currently stands. LifeLock contacts the credit bureaus and puts your information on "Fraud Alert". From then on, every ninety days, the program continues to do put your credit report on fraud alert.

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Millions of Americans have their identity stolen and this is only part of the crime.  These same Americans are victimized through numerous means of financial fraud.  The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) states that over 27 million citizens of this country were victims of identity theft in the last 5 years.  According to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), the number of victims will increase by 500,000-700,000 each year.  Identity theft has increased by 79% from the year 2002 to 2003.

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Internet identity theft is a concern, or should be a concern for anyone who surfs the Internet or transacts business online. As more people become comfortable shopping online, the opportunity for internet identity theft increases. Every block that is established to protect a person’s identity, another breach is made enabling a dishonest person to steal their identity.

In some of the most prolific scams of internet identity theft involve someone simply being asked for their information and, as unfortunate as it may be, some people willingly provide the necessary information to allow someone to steal their identification. A name, social security number and an address is basically all that is needed to assume someone’s financial identity.

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If you are like a lot of Americans you are probably worried about the chance of your identity being stolen.  I have had family and friends that have been victims of this crime. This has become a very popular crime over the past few years, and more and more people are suffering the consequences.  But just because this crime is common, does not mean that you should give into it.  Instead, you should learn how to prevent identity theft from happening to you.

The first thing that you will want to do in order to ensure that your identity is safe is to never give out your personal information to anybody.  If for some reason your social security number is requested, make sure that it is an absolute necessity.  Many times, the only reason that somebody will need your social security number is for filing reasons.  In other words, they can find another way to identify you.  By simply asking questions you will greatly decrease your chances of somebody stealing your identity.

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