The Importance of Online Identity Protection

Online space is a wonder of modern technological advancement and provides many features that have contributed to the betterment of our lives. It’s not all glitter and gold, though, as the online space also comes with several risks that can have devastating effects on everyone’s life. One such issue that poses a constant threat to people is identity theft. In order to solve this problem, identity protection has come up as a new challenge.

Identity theft is committed in several ways. Some of them sift through trash bins, looking for bank accounts and credit card statements, while other high-tech methods include accessing organizations’ databases to steal the data of customers. Once they get the information they are looking for, identity thieves can ruin a person’s credit rating and cause similar harms. Plus, they can use their identity for various unethical purposes.

Let’s now understand the different types of identity theft to find a proper solution for each one of them.

Types of Identity Theft
Identity theft can typically be divided into these types:

● Criminal Identity Theft: In this, a criminal misrepresents himself as another person during an arrest for avoiding a summons, prevent the discovery of a warrant issued in his real name, or prevent an arrest or conviction record.
● Medical Identity Theft: In this type of theft, someone identifies himself as another person to obtain free medical care.
● Financial Identity Theft: Under this category, the thief uses someone else’s identity or personal details to get benefits like credit, services, goods, and many more. This is one of the most common identity theft types that is committed all around the world.
● Child Identity Theft: In this, the thief takes some child’s identity for several personal gains. Child identity theft is common because kids typically do not have data associated with them that could pose obstacles for the perpetrator. So they can easily use the child’s name and Social Security number to obtain a residence, find employment, avoid arrests, get loans. It is seen that often the victim is a friend’s child, family member, or someone close to the perpetrator. A few thieves even steal the personal information of deceased loved ones.
● Synthetic Identity Theft: It is a type of fraud where the thief combines some fake information with the stolen one. It is then used to open fraudulent accounts and make fraudulent purchases. Synthetic identity theft allows the criminal to steal money from any credit card companies or lenders who extend credit based on fake identity.

So it can be seen how different types of identity thefts can cause you trouble or leave your identity permanently damaged. In case you don’t opt for proper online identity protection, any of these problems can happen to you.

Implementing Online Identity Protection
Some measures you can take to avoid all the online identity problems are:

● Device Protection: The very first point of attraction for all identity thieves is your unprotected devices. Most people don’t keep an antivirus or firewall protection on their laptops and phones. Therefore, thieves enter into these devices and get their data easily. You need to imply all possible security methods to avoid any breach.
● Online Protection: Usually, device protections fall short in front of new and unknown malware. Thus, it is crucial to keep all your online activities and transactions safe. For this, you can take proper measures and remember not to open any unauthorized website/mail/pop-up.
● Network Protection: The Internet has become a vital part of everyone’s lives. Technically, people can’t survive without the internet even for a couple of hours. If you are the same, you must be using several networks in your home, workplace, public place, etc. But do you ever ensure whether or not these networks are protected? An unsecured public network is a place where most people get their data stolen. So even if you need to use these types of networks, make sure not to transact any crucial information on it.

Conclusion
By now, you must have understood what not having online identity protection can do to you. Therefore, you need to remain secure with proper security measures taken for your device, network, and transactions. Apart from this, you must observe any unexpected activities on your devices because they can be a sign of a breach. Report them as soon as you catch them.

Identity protection