Personal Security
Avoid throwing away information that can identify you
Consider purchasing a shredder to ensure that you are not recycling oportunities for identity theives. (dumpster diving)
Some of the consequences of identity theft:
- Setting up new ABN's
- Setting up new Bank accounts
- Getting new drivers licences
- Difficulty in obtaining credit
Identites being thrown out with the rubbish
Two out of every three Australian households are risking identity theft by throwing personal papers into their rubbish bins, research has found.
A bin raiding waste study for National Identity Fraud Awareness Week analysed the contents of 180 domestic rubbish bins and 237 recycling bins.
Just over half of all bins contained documents that could be used in a 100 point identity check, including drivers licences, Medicare and Centrelink cards, utility bills and bank statements. from Sunday Mail 4-10-08
Watch your old Computer hard drive
Advice from Computer Repairs experts is not only do you need a good computer backup strategy but you also need to wipe your hard drive if selling your old computer.
Some of these measures will just save you wasting time and avoid security issues.
Protect your passwords
Avoid allowing a burglar to locate and retrieve passwords. Use descriptions of your passwords that a stranger would have trouble understanding. For example instead of GoldCoast238 you could say my favourite place and previous room number or similar. It is best to mix alpha and numeric infromation.
Be carefull what can be Googled
Here is one scenario that can easily lead to a security problem or a costly set of replacement keys. You accidently loose your keys and on the key ring you leave your mobile phone number. According to search engine optimisation experts it is easy to type a few searches in Google and come up with quite some information. Be careful that if you loose your keys that the finder does not have the ability to trace your address by the information on the tag.