What Can I Do to Avoid Identity Theft

Minimize your risk of identity theft by:

• Ordering a free credit report every year at www.annualcreditreport.com, reviewing it carefully and notifying the credit bureau of any errors you find
• Buying, and using, a shredder for charge receipts, insurance forms, checks, bank statements and expired charge cards, etc.
• Putting passwords on your credit card, bank and phone accounts
• Using hard-to-guess passwords.  Make sure your passwords include at least 8 characters and mix it up with upper and lower case letters, numbers and special symbols
• Avoiding giving any personal information, including bank account info over the phone, through mail or the internet unless you initiate the contact
• Calling back customer service to confirm the legitimacy of any incoming calls
• Bringing outgoing mail to the post office rather than placing it in your home mailbox for pick-up
• Asking the post office to hold your mail while on vacation.