Know Your Information
Get to know your information and your actions toward them in order to start protecting your identity and preventing its theft. This is the first step of identity protection as stated by the Identity KAOS™ principles. To know your information will allow you to move to the next phases of Identity KAOS and protect your most important information and documents. In every battle, you need to understand and get to know your opponent (in this case, identity thieves), as well as their intentions and targets before defensive or protective, and, reactive or corrective measures can be put in place as part of the plan. In the case of identity theft: You must first get to know your identity information or components (the target) as well as your actions with regards to that information. As a starting point, an inventory of all your information assets such as credit cards, social security card, passport, birth and death certificates, etc. along with the related information such as location, issuer name, frequency of statements, address, phone number, account number, etc. must be taken to get a complete list of all your identity components on hand. The identity theft overview section provides further information about identity components. List every document or object that contains any personal piece of information about your identity such as online accounts, financial accounts, credit cards, etc. Maintain and update that list on a regular basis as you acquire new information or discard the old ones. Keep that list in a very secure location. Second, you must also understand your behavior and actions with regards to the handling of any of the information in that list. Be aware of: a) how you use that information b) when you use the information c) with whom you share that information d) how often you use or share the information e) where you keep that information f) how, when and how often you acquire new or destroy old information. More specific tips are provided in the identity theft prevention section for proper ways to handle and manage your personal information. Identity Protection Insights NewsletterEffective identity protection requires dynamic and integrated solutions. This site provides awareness, education and many solutions to address the growing problem of identity theft. Please sign up for the Identity Protection Insights newsletter to receive periodic notification of important articles and solutions, major identity theft news analysis, fraud alerts, and other service announcements.
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