What You Can Do to Monitor for ID Theft & Fraud

You can be your own fraud monitor just by paying close
attention to your credit card & bank statements, particularly
on-line.

We recommend at ID Theft Secrets blog, that you should
open -or- switch to credit cards which allow you to
view your statements on-line. This enables you to
self monitor your accounts typically within 1 -2 days
of any transactions - especially looking for
suspicious ones.

According to a recent report by the Better Business
Bureau, accessing accounts on-line provides earlier
identity theft detection compared to monitoring
monthly paper statements and bills.

Here are some of the id theft flags you can look for
which may indicate fraudulent activity has already
occurred:

1) Change in date of birth or social security number

2) Change in the name on your account

3) Unusually large purchases compared to the normal
patterns for your account

4) For your on-line eCommerce accounts, the shipping
address has suddenly changed or is different than your
billing address

By monitoring your accounts on a regular basis to
simply look for some of these common steps identity
theft thieves use to commit fraud, you will be able to
better protect your accounts from unauthorized use.