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Identity Theft

Friday, December 8th, 2006

Think Identity Theft won’t happen to you? Think Again.

Millions of people are affected by identity theft every year. Identity theft is when someone else obtains and uses your personal information. But identity theft can be a lot more detrimental than you would think.

With enough of your personal information, a criminal can file false applications for loans and credit cards in your name. They could fraudulently withdraw money from your bank accounts. And even use your name to obtain other goods or privileges that might be denied to the criminal if he were to use his own name. If the criminal is smart enough to change the addresses associated with your credit cards and other accounts, your bills would be sent somewhere else and you might not know for months that you were being victimized.

What Identity Theft does to you:

Identity theft can seriously wreak havoc on your life and repairing the damage is a long and arduous process. Identity theft inflicts substantial damage to a victims assets, credit and reputation. And if it happens to you, you are in charge of fixing it. Your Credit Card Company and bank probably won’t help you. In fact, most major financial institutions can afford to write off a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, 27.3 million Americans have been victim to identity theft in the last five years, costing them more than $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses.

Most victims of identity theft spend months or even years clearing their names and fixing their credit reports. And until all that is fixed, victims may lose job opportunities, be refused loans, education, housing or cars, or may even be arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.

How to Stay Safe

Identity theft can happen in lots of ways, but one of the easiest ways to protect yourself is to make sure that a criminal can’t access your information through your computer. If you want a solid solution that will safeguard your computer and let you safely shop and do your banking online, then you need the Secure IE Browser Security fortified with Private IE protection.

Secure IE Browser Security has an integrated browser shield that stops spyware at the point of entry and protects you from harmful ActiveX and popups. Secure IE allows you to block popups and ActiveX according to security zone, which means that your favorite sites still work, while you are protected from hackers and spyware who often use popups and ActiveX to gain access to your computer and steal your identity. Secure IE also has the Internet Security Manager, which automatically detects and configures browser settings to provide you with maximum security. And Secure IE updates itself every 7 days to provide you with the best protection available.

And when you use Secure IE Browser Security in conjunction with Private IE, you get a comprehensive solution that clears out any sensitive information that might be stored on your computer. Private IE was built to clear out your cookies, cache, temporary internet files, internet history, recent documents and recycling bin. And what’s more, Private IE does all this automatically, so if you leave your computer in a hurry, you can be sure that no one can access any of your information. Making sure that you aren’t leaving sensitive information lying around your computer is a great way to protect yourself from identity theft. Let Secure IE and Private IE help you stay protected.