You bought the dorm sheets and comforter, the mini-fridge and the laptop computer. You made sure registration and medical forms were complete and talked about budgets and personal safety on campus. But do you know what to do to protect your identity online when heading off to campus this fall?
As the cases of identity theft through college and university campuses continue to soar, it is important for college students, faculty and staff to understand the ways identity thieves are operating online to compromise your personal information.
Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, the industry leader in identity theft protection, offers the following proactive measures to help protect your identity online:
Beware of Peer-to-Peer Networks. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing networks like Limewire, Bearshare or KaZaa are most often used for sharing music files online. Upon downloading these free applications, you are agreeing to share not just your music files but all of the files on your network. For example, registration applications, tax forms and files containing passwords are now available to thieves. To help protect yourself, uninstall these programs from your system.
Socialize Safely. When using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, limit the personal identifying information that you are sharing. There is no need to share your address or date of birth with your “friends.”
Be cautious of “Phish”erman. Understand that identity thieves are very smart and savvy. Many identity thieves operate by posing as a source that you trust — your bank, campus admissions office, etc —trying to collect personal identifying information through an email phishing scam. Thieves create emails that look as though they are from a source you trust, then they ask for personal information, thus phishing, in order to“fix” or “confirm” something on your account or records. Do not give personal information out online unless you initiated the connection and the URL contains “https,” showing that it is a secure site.
Scrub-a-dub-dub. Remove yourself — and your computer — from organizations that track your online trends. To remove yourself from the Network Advertising Initiative, visit www.networkadvertising.org.
DevelOp_UniQuE_PaSsWorDs! Create hard-to-crack passwords that are complex and more than 10 characters in length. Combine letters in both uppercase and lowercase, symbols and numbers to help increase your personal security.
