Robert Siciliano is a NextAdvisor.com Expert Guest Blogger
The National Foundation for Credit Counseling announced its second annual National protect your identity week, which runs from October 17 to 24. National protect your identity week aims to educate consumers about protection against identity theft. The Better Business Bureau of the Council established a partnership with the NFC to sponsor this initiative and a number of other national organizations will also provide support Protect your Identity Week Coalition.
For more information on relevant educational events in your area, including identity theft workshops, credit report reviews, and shredding site, go to ProtectYourIDNow.org where you also find identity theft prevention tips, videos, an interactive quiz to assess your risk of identity theft, and resources for victims.
This year ProtectYourIDNow.org added a new feature, a blog where I will post every day during the week Protect your identity and weekly therafter to provide insight, information and advice on topics relevant to identity theft. My goal is to keep the public informed and ten steps ahead of the bad guys. (Of course, I hope you will also continue to follow me here NextAdvisor.com, as well as excellent advice Caitlin Kent and Joe.)
The Identity Theft Resource Center subdivides identity theft into five categories:
- business / commercial identity theft (in which the thief uses the company name of the victim to obtain credit)
- identity theft criminal (in which the thief looks like the victim during the arrest of a crime)
- financial identity theft (in which the thief uses the identity of the victim to obtain goods and services)
- cloning identity (in which the thief uses information from the victim to take their identity in everyday life)
- medical identity theft (in which the thief uses information from the victim to get care or medical drugs)
I will discuss these issues and other related frauds on an ongoing basis. Meanwhile, take basic steps to protect your identity. You can try to prevent new account fraud by obtaining a credit freeze, setting up your own fraud alerts, or invest in a protection service against identity theft.
Robert Siciliano, identity theft speaker, discusses identity theft social media.
Robert Siciliano is CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com, an expert on identity theft, professional speaker, security analyst, published author and television news correspondent. Siciliano works with Fortune 1000 and start-up companies as a consultant on product launches, branding, messaging, representation, SEO and media. the thoughts and advice of Siciliano on all these issues often appear in both television and print media news, including CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, Forbes and USA Today. He has 25 years of safety training as a member of the American Society for Industrial Security. He is the author of two books, including The Safety Minute: Living on high alert; How to take control of your personal safety and to prevent fraud . He also established a partnership with Uni-Ball to help raise awareness of the growing threat of identity theft and provide tips on how you can protect yourself.