ID Shield

Scammers love to take advantage of this hectic school season. They can easily slip under the radar and steal personal information. Then, they can use the identity and other private data to make purchases, sign up for services, or sell personal information to other bad actors. This can all happen before the person even knows [...]

Ever misplaced your smartphone—even briefly? It’s a scary feeling. Now, imagine your smartphone being lost for good. All your contacts, photos, videos, voicemails, apps, social media accounts, and search history are suddenly inaccessible. Your ability to call, email, text, and video chat is gone. This vulnerability is why smartphones have become prime targets for hackers. [...]

How to Spot and Avoid Travel Scams As travel season peaks, fraudsters ramp up their efforts to deceive unsuspecting travelers. Being informed, proactive, and vigilant are ways to protect you and your family’s vacation travel. Here are key travel scams to watch out for: 1. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) rental scams With the rising popularity of P2P [...]

Security For Smart Home: How to Protect It From Identity Thieves In the rush to fill our homes with intelligent devices ranging from voice-activated assistants to connected coffee cups to smart TVs, we seem oblivious to the security risks. These smart devices could be used as spy tools, opening doors for cybercriminals to steal personal [...]

Your credit reports are an important record of your credit activity, loans, public records and more. Creditors such as credit card companies and banks submit your credit information to the three major credit bureaus, which compile this info into your credit report. If you ever need to take out a loan, your lender will review [...]

Many people want to find that special someone. If you are on the hunt for a soulmate, you may be frequenting dating sites to see if you can match with the perfect person. Lots of folks find love online! But problems can pop up fast if you fall into the wrong hands online. Romance scams are nasty schemes [...]

Why Older Americans are Top Scam Targets Scammers who target the elderly seem to be all around us. You’ve likely heard about the grandparent’s scam where a caller claims to be an individual’s grandchild needing emergency cash. Another classic theme is that the individual has won a prize or giveaway. The elderly are top targets [...]

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is unique information that can be used to link to an individual’s identity. In some cases, stolen PII can help identity thieves fraudulently access someone else’s identity. PII can include your full name, date of birth, and Social Security numbers (SSN)—which are nearly impossible to replace if they’re compromised. This is [...]

Have you heard people talking about SIM, but didn’t know what it was? A SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) looks like the chip on the front of most credit cards, but slightly bigger. This microdevice enables your phone to connect with your cellular provider and carries important information about your account. Without it, your phone [...]

Recruiters, employers, and co-workers are all guilty of checking your social media either to see how you might fit into their organization or out of simple curiosity about who you are; chances are if you have taken the time to look someone up, they have done the same. Most of you are probably thinking that you have [...]

Have you ever asked yourself: “am I being hacked?” Perhaps not, because skilled hackers do their dirty work in a way that doesn’t tip off their victims. And that’s their point—the longer that a victim is unaware that they’ve been hacked, the more damage that hackers can do. Which is why being aware of the [...]

“Give credit where credit is due—otherwise freeze it.” Ok, that’s not an actual quote, but yes, you should consider freezing your credit in certain situations. A credit freeze can also be called a security freeze, but why would freezing your credit be beneficial? It’s an active, simple way to help prevent online criminals from opening new [...]

Can You be Hacked by Replying to a Text? Have you ever lost your smartphone? Feels like you’ve lost your world—which, in a way, you have. Your phone has all your contacts, voice mails, apps, social media, photos, videos, search history—not to mention that you use it to call, face time, email, video and text. [...]

Data breaches used to be a shock, but now that most of us have a vibrant digital presence, they’ve become more of a reality. If your personally identifiable information hasn’t been compromised by a breach yet, there’s a decent chance that it will at some point in the future. The definition of a data breach [...]