Consumer Law

Protect Your Identity & Credit by Protecting Your Personal Information

By Stephen Otto, Pittsburgh Consumer Attorney

Remembering and following these important tips, provided by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office (relevant nationwide), will go a long way in protecting your credit by protecting your personal information:

• Don’t give personal informationon the phone, through the mail, or over the Internet, unless you’ve initiated the contact or know with whom you’re dealing.
• Ask your financial institutions for their policies about sharing your information.
• Pay attention to your billing or account statement cycles.  Follow up with your financial institutions if your statements don’t arrive on time.
• Carefully monitor your monthly credit card statements.  Report inaccuracies right away.
• Keep items with personal information in a safe place.  Shred any charge receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, bank checks, and other financial statements that you are discarding, expired charge cards, and credit offers you get in the mail.
• Add passwords to your credit card, bank, and other accounts.  Avoid using easily available information like your mother’s maiden name, your birthdate, the last four digits of your Social Security number or your phone number, or a series of consecutive numbers.
• Be mindful about where you leave personal information in your home, especially if you have roommates or are having work done in your home.

(List source:  PA Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection)

Full post as published by Credit Law Network on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).