Sharing Sparks Online Identity Theft

Sharing is not always caring. While sharing may good a thing
in certain aspects of life, sharing your personal information is never a good
idea. While most people and businesses think this only pertains to obviously
information such as your social security number or credit card, something as
innocent as sharing your pets name could aid an identity thief in accessing
sensitive information. We share everything online; its now a part of our
everyday lives and culture. Businesses can now solely transact online and
consumers have more control over their online assets with individual accounts.
Its easy to be seduced by the convenience of emerging technology but its
important to protect yourself and your assets. In a recent article published by
Mashable, an infographic outlined tips to
protect your identity online. Many of these tips involved protecting your
smartphone and its contents, but passwords are not always the answer. Its no
secret that consumers do not view password strength as a priority and even if
they did, hackers are becoming smarter and sophisticated enough to crack many
levels and strengths of passwords.

Protecting your online identity is especially important
around this time of year (tax return season) because people are sharing more
than ever. Not only are they sharing a
lot of private information, but also they are eager to share in order to get
the biggest return they can get. Last year over 12.6 million Americans were
with identity
fraud and over $21 billion in losses.
Javelin also found that people on social media had the highest
incidences of fraud. Some researchers estimated that an online identity was
worth around $5,000.00 to identity thieves, that worth has significantly
increased with the amount of information we share as businesses and consumers.
As we start to share more, we need to protect more. Online
fraud prevention is a necessity as companies and consumers share more
information online. Detecting these
risks is the first step to preventing them start the conversation today.

[Contributed by EVS Marketing]