Identity theft

There are lots of things you can do to protect yourself from having your identity stolen:

• Keep personal and valuable documents in a safe place, preferably locked away
• If you do lose something like a passport then report it straight away
• Be careful when you throw away letters and documents which have your name and address and other financial information. It’s better to shred these so they don’t fall into the wrong hands
• Check your bank statements and credit card statements to make sure all the entries are correct and follow up on any entries that are unknown
• Use passwords that are not easy to guess and don’t use the same password for everything
• Never give your password and PINs to another person and, if you must write them down, do so securely and never altogether in one place
• If you get a phone call where the caller asks for personal details, never provide them. Check the number of the organisation and ring them back if you think the call is genuine
• Never go along with calls from IT companies claiming to need to log on to your computer to correct a fault – they are usually trying to access your personal information
• Get a copy of your credit rating on a regular basis and question any abrupt change in your credit score
• If you move house tell everyone who may write to you there and get your mail redirected for at least a year
• If you throw away a computer or mobile phone make sure it has no data on it