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The most coveted things ID thieves want from you
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Apr 7, 2025
What's now considered crucial data to protect may surprise you, because what identity thieves want from you is changing rapidly. Along with the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, I outline steps you can take NOW to secure that data which is floating around online.
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securing your
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data it is not as simple as you think
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you can't just take a padlock in a chain
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and secure your data inside of your
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device because so much of it is now in
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the clouds and either commercial servers
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or those run by the government so the
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question is how do you safeguard it the
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digital world has changed what is
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important to protect and the value of
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that data and it changes it changes on
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an almost daily basis what's important
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today may not be important tomorrow that
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means we need to be a lot more focused
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on what data we protect and how we
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protect it the things that we really
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need to be focusing on today are our
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login and our passwords and our driver's
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license those those kind of
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credentials are being used and misused
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in ways that they have not been
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historically logins and passwords are
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the golden ticket right now for a bad
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guy who wants to steal your information
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as evidenced by the fact that in many
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recent data breaches criminals were
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after those loginins and passwords they
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are the keys to the digital kingdom
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today you don't ever want to reuse the
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same password on multiple accounts but
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keeping track of dozens of passwords can
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be a pain without the assistance of a
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password manager once you had to buy a
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separate app to do that nowadays
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password managers are built into
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basically every device we own whether
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it's the browser on your laptop or your
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smartphone's operating system they are
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very easy tools to use and they'll
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remember your passwords so you don't
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have to but what about the stuff you
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can't protect because it's locked in
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somebody's cloud server with the rise of
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AI should we we be worried about our
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fingerprints and our facial identity in
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a database somewhere not necessarily in
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a corporate database but in a database
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somewhere that then can be hacked and
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reused when they're storing the the
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image of your face or they're storing an
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an image of your fingerprints those are
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generally reduced to numbers it's not
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physically always the actual image it's
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it's almost never the image of a
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fingerprint while they may be able to
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replicate that at some point very
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difficult for them to do today it's also
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very timeconuming very costly and and
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identity criminals don't like either one
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of those things they're essentially lazy
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so much of our information is stored in
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various government databases without
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trying to get into all the political
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aspects of it should we be concerned
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about access of government databases and
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the loss of our personal information
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that way there's a lot of heightened
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interest there's a lot of there's a lot
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of nervousness about this but the
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practical reality is there's a lot of
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other places we should be worried first
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and there are steps we should be taking
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to protect our data um where it is at
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risk among the steps you can take to
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protect your data freeze your credit
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restrict access to criminals who want to
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steal your identity contact each of the
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three major credit reporting agencies
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and submit your free request online by
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phone or by mail download your Social
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Security statement to make sure
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everything is okay to do that create a
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My Social Security account on the Social
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Security website and use a secure ID
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number when filing your tax return it's
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known as an identity protection PIN
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that'll stop scammers from filing a fake
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return in your name to steal your refund
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unfortunately we now live in times where
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we have to act to protect our own data
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when we can if we make it inconvenient
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for the scammers to access it it's going
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to be a lot less valuable to criminals
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working for you I'm the consumer guy
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Steve Frasier