Secure your identity assets

Naturally, we believe that the best way to be absolutely sure that your identity assets are safe, is to put them out of the reach of identity thieves with iDovos. That way, even if a criminal does manage to obtain some of your personal information, it will be worthless to him or her because your assets will be ‘off limits’ until you decide otherwise. There are moreover some simple, practical steps that can be taken to reduce the chances that sensitive personal information will fall into the wrong hands in the first place:

1.  Shred

Although a great deal of identity theft occurs by electronic means, quite a bit of sensitive information continues to be obtained by more “old-fashioned” methods, e.g. physically stealing documents, mail, or even rummaging through people’s garbage looking for old bills, bank statements, receipts etc… Therefore it’s a good idea to dispose of unneeded paperwork containing sensitive personal information such as account numbers, social security numbers, billing information, etc., in such a way as to ensure that no one will be able to read it. One of the easiest and most efficient ways to accomplish this is by using a small shredder, which can be obtained relatively cheaply, under $50.00 USD as of the time in which this site is being created.

2.  Where possible, stop paper statements

Along the same lines as above, reducing the amount of physical paper containing sensitive information reduces your target exposure correspondingly.

3.  Check your credit report frequently

You’ve probably heard this quite a bit, but it is no less true: check your credit report frequently for signs that credit fraud has occurred. Free credit reports can be obtained from the three major Credit Reporting Agencies (CRA’s):   Transunion, Equifax, and Experian.

4.  Make sure sensitive information passed over the internet is secure

When passing sensitive information over the internet, e.g. social security numbers, credit card numbers, account numbers, etc., make sure that the second-party transactor has applied encryption controls which will ensure that the information you pass will be unviewable if somehow intercepted.

5.  Change passwords frequently

Reduce the chances that a thief will obtain vital information electronically by creating challenging passwords, and changing them frequently.

6. Destroy credit cards which are expired or no longer needed

Again, reducing the number of physical locations where sensitive information resides, correspondingly reduces the chances of that information being compromised.