What is Identity Theft, How It Happens and the Best Protection

With increasing digital footprints on online platforms, there comes the risk of enhanced security threats to your data & identity. Here, users are prone to numerous cyber threats and cyber-attacks performed in different forms. So, if you have recently noticed some suspicious activity while being online then it is the time to look for certain security measures to keep your identity & data safe.

What is Identity Theft?

Identity theft could be simply termed as stealing your identifiable information by cybercriminals. This identifiable information could be your social security number, bank details, credit card credentials or similar details. Here, cybercriminals pursue numerous methods to attack you and steal your sensitive personal information. They may dupe you through phishing scams, perform ransomware attack or do similar things.

How Does Identity Theft Happen?

While there are numerous ways cybercriminals could adapt to target you, here we have discussed the 5 possible ways your identity could be compromised.

Phishing Attempts: This is one of the most practiced ways cybercriminals attack you to breach your security and theft identity. Here, they send you emails or messages through other mediums asking you to click on certain links or open attachments. The only reason they ask you to do so is to target you through these malicious links or attachments. Once you perform the said task malware will prevail on your system and your security would be breached easily.

Open Network: If you find open or free W-Fi as lucrative deal then we suggest you it brings a lot of troubles as well. Here, it becomes easier for cybercriminals to target your system through a small piece of malicious software on an open network. Thus, cyber experts suggest to always use password protected encrypted network for better security.

Ransomware Attack: The roots of ransomware attack go back to more than a decade now, but it has prevailed exponentially in recent times. Here, the cyber world has seen some most deadly ransomware attacks in recent times where millions of dollars have been duped from users. In addition to that, it has also caused some serious security breach. Here, cybercriminals attack your system with malware and lock you out of your system. They may even encrypt your data and ask you for ransom to give decryption key.

Malicious Drives: While users have switched to cloud servers to save their valuable data still there are a high number of users who rely on external drives to share & store their data. If you are one of those users, then you need to be extra careful as using malicious external drive (unknowingly) on your system could easily cause a data breach.

Offline Stealing Attempts: Here, criminals try to steal your identity traces by different methods. They may steal your wallet containing your personal information and identity proofs or they can simply perform dumpster diving where they look for identity traces in trash or bin. They can even steal your sensitive information from the unattended system or mobile device.

Best Protection against Identity Theft

While there are numerous ways available to prevent identity theft, let’s discuss a few important ones here.

Strong Passwords: We suggest you should always prefer strong passwords for your computer, mobile devices, email accounts, bank credentials, credit cards and for other sensitive documents. You should include special characters, numbers etc. to make a strong password for different accounts.

Avoid open network: Always prefer to use the encrypted and password protected network for better data security. As we discussed, open networks bring a lot of security threats thus you can simply avoid it by using a password protected network.

Don’t click on unknown links: This is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to keep your data & identity safe from cybercriminals. Never ever click on suspicious links send from unknown senders or do not even open attachments sent from these senders. It will simply help you avoid unnecessary trouble.

Destroy data before sending it to bin: Destroying data & documents before sending it to trash will help you avoid unnecessary trouble. As we discussed, criminals could dig through your trash to find useful information thus it is always better to crash data before sending it to the bin.

Use Identity Protection Tools: The next best solution to deal with identity theft is to use reliable identity theft protection tools. These smart tools work on advanced algorithms to help you keep your identity traces safe from cybercriminals. One such tool is Advanced Identity Protector that works on proprietary protection techniques to help you find all identity traces on your device and keep them safe in the secured vault. Once you move your valuable information to this encrypted vault no one can access your sensitive information but you.

Conclusion: The repercussions of identity theft could be plenty where you not only suffer financial losses but it could even impact your social & personal life. Here, we have tried to discuss the basics of identity theft and how you can keep yourself safe against it. If you know more such ways for better identity security, then feel free to comment below.

Guest article written by: Chandra Shekhar Choudhary is working at Systweak Blogs, as an SEO analyst and technical Content Writer. His potential of writing is PC tips, Android and Mac tricks and he is anxious in writing other technical blogs. You can also find Chandra Shekhar on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.