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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Perhaps one of the oldest , and most dangerous forms of identity fraud is social security identity theft. When someone has your social security number, they, in the minds of most financial organizations, become you. This is why it is so important to protect your social security number and be very careful whom you give it to. Learn more about protecting yourself from social security identity theft. Social security identity theft occurs when a criminal or scammer gets a hold of your social security number. They then use it to apply for loans, get a visa or passport, or much more. The way someone usually finds out they have been a victim of social security identity theft is long after the theft of their personal information has occurred. They might start receiving calls from unknown creditors demanding payment for outrageously high credit card bills or other loans.

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