Safeguard Your Identity: A Review

Our electronic age brings many conveniences, a wealth of information, goods and services, all accessed from the comfort of our homes. However, this technology comes with a price. While we gain in the realm of technology, we make enormous sacrifices in privacy, making the crime of identity theft all the easier. It comes as no surprise that identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States, since it has become a faceless crime where your thief can steal your identity and wreak havoc on your finances from the comfort of his home computer. This doesn't have to happen to you. Mari Frank's Safeguard Your Identity will arm you with the proper tactics to secure your personal and financial information.

Frank, attorney and consultant, is a former identity theft victim and self-taught expert on this crime, and she has devoted a great deal of time and effort to educating people in methods that will protect their privacy and information as well as promotion of legislation regarding privacy and identity theft. In Safeguard Your Identity: Protect Yourself With A Personal Privacy Audit, she tells you how to defend yourself as an individual, employee, and business owner. The book begins with an assessment, so you can see just how well your information is protected, and follows with why identity thieves commit this crime and the methods they use to commit it. The chapters that follow detail specific measures you can take to prevent identity fraud at home, in public places, on your computer and at work. This includes valuable tips like never mailing checks from your home mailbox (thieves can steal checks and alter them) and encrypting sensitive data you keep on your computer along other important advice. The last few chapters tell you the steps you should take if you are or ever become a victim of identity theft. The information is presented a clear concise manner with a reader-friendly layout. Also included are personal experiences from fraud victims as well as contact information for companies and agencies you would need to access if you became a victim.

Her suggested methods may seem overwhelming and even excessive at times, but you may prefer to err on the side of caution. Following most or all of the information in Safeguard Your Identity, you can rest assured your data will be significantly more secure than it was before reading this book. With information so easily accessed today, there is no guarantee that you will never become an identity theft victim, but following Frank's suggested precautions and instructions will make you a less appealing target for a potential identity thief.