National Protect Your Identity Week

The week of 10/16-23/2011 has been designated as National Protect Your Identity Week. This is something we all need to think about and take steps to make sure your identity is protected.

Think about your passwords:

• When is the last time you changed yours?
• Do you use separate ones for each of your accounts? If not you should.
  
• Are you using a strong password. Does it have upper and lower case? Numbers and letters?
• How easy is yours to guess?
• Do you have security questions set up for password retrieval?

Think about you personal finances, do you monitor your credit card and bank statements for unauthorized activity? If not, you need to do so.

Have you checked your credit report for unauthorized activity? You can get a free copy of your credit report semi annually. Do so, and check it for accuracy. To get a copy click on this link:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Do you shred documents before you recycle or discard? If it has your name or any other personal information on it, you should do so.

Have you talked with your kids about their identity and the need to keep things private and not share with their friends. Take the time this week to have the conversation.

Take a few minutes and do a web search of yourself. Find out what is out there about you. Use your favorite web search tool and run you and your family names. If you find something that concerns you, contact the site posting the information, you can probably get it taken down.

These are just a few things to think about this week but the key thing is to think about your personal identity and what you are doing and can to protect yourself.