Protect Your Identity, Beware of January Mail

I’ve gotten a great deal of interest from consumers and the media regarding the last tip in this recent blog post.  Here I advise consumers to be aware of all of the high value tax related documents that will be hitting your mailboxes during the month of January.  These documents include W2s, 1099s, year-end statements from your bank or brokerage company, interest statements from your mortgage lenders, and other sensitive items.

What all of these items have in common is the inclusion of three things; your full legal name, your address and your Social Security Number.  This is the trifecta of information needed in order to either apply for credit in your name or otherwise apply for government issued documents such as a driver’s license.  And, if you do contract work and receive a 1099 memorializing the income, that document also has your company’s name, address and Federal tax ID number.

Many people believe ID theft is a high tech crime involving data breaches, phishing websites and email scams.  However, the reality is that ID theft is still a very low-tech crime largely perpetrated by people who simply steal documents out of your garbage or mailbox.  In fact, some people believe the majority of identity theft incidents involve a family member or friend who has unusual access to your sensitive identification and financial information.  Point being, it’s not the well-organized data breach that you need to be focused on.

How Do You Prevent Identity Theft

A friend of mine in Montana made a very good point to me years ago when we were hiking up a mountain.  I love telling the story so you’ll just have to indulge me.  If you’re hiking through the woods and you come across a bear or a mountain lion, what should you do?  Some people would tell you to run, while others will tell you that you’ll never outrun either animal so running would be futile.

I asked my friend what you should do and he said, “run like crazy.”  When I suggested to him that no man could ever outrun a mountain lion he said, with a smile on his face, “I don’t have to outrun the mountain lion, I just have to outrun you.”  His point, while a little scary at that moment, is applicable to this ID theft story.

You don’t have to outrun the identity thief.  You just have to make yourself a little less attractive to him than your neighbors.  ID thieves are opportunistic.  They’re also going to take the path of least resistance.  Why climb over a fence, break a window, and haul out a Persian rug when I can steal your mail, open a new credit card account and buy the rug online…complete with free shipping.

You will significantly reduce your chances of being a victim of ID theft if you will take some very simple steps to reduce your expose.  First off, I’ll echo what’s been said 1000 times already in other ID theft articles, which is to buy and overuse a high quality shredder.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen tax returns, bank statements, deposit slips, checkbook registers, paystubs and even expired credit cards simply discarded in the trash.

The second piece of advice is directly applicable to this “January Mail” article, which is to download as many of those January documents as possible in lieu of receiving them in the mail.  It’s not too late to incorporate this strategy for your 2010 tax documents coming in the next few weeks.  In fact, you can already download year-end mortgage interest statements because you’ve already made all of your payments for 2010.

Now, I realize this won’t work for everything because 1099s and W2s are traditionally delivered via snail mail, only.  And while you may not be able to download every single one of your tax documents you can certainly reduce the amount of high value January mail sitting in your mailbox.  And, if you’re really lucky you’ll never have to worry about outrunning a mountain lion either.

John Ulzheimer is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and the author of the “credit rating” definition on Wikipedia.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  He has served as a credit expert witness in more than 70 cases and has been qualified to testify in both Federal and State court on the topic of consumer credit.

Categorised in: Credit Monitoring, Credit Report, Identity Theft

This post was written by John Ulzheimer