My friend had £2k stolen from his credit card and I don't want this to happen to me. He suggested using an online credit monitoring service. Does anyone know any websites where you can find information on how to protect your privacy online/offline? Lots of information can be gleaned from Google, but no one website appears to provide the guidance I need....
Hello david01, Some tips here. There is also a link on identity theft in the sticky at the top of this forum.
Have experience with this one myself in Canada. 1) Go to your bank and ask them to refer you to the credit monitoring they recommend and sign up so anybody trying to use your credit id will be forced to answer extra questions. 2) Reduce your card credit limit or get an extra low credit card limit for on line use 3) Change your pin numbers monthly to maximum strength values 4) Keep your psw's and pins OFF LINE on a USB stick or use RoboForm Some software offers id protection functions, for psw's , id's sin numbers etc. Two I have access too are BD 10 anti-spyware privacy services and the other is ZA Pro's MyVault. Re ZA's MyVault, there are doubts about it's effectiveness and some Guru's there advise they don't use it since it gives a false sense of security or is more trouble than it's worth. Others are quick advocates for it but that is for them to prove. Much later, I'm going to run 3rd party tests on BD10 id tool and ZA Pro's and report results on the forums I participate in. In the meantime, if anybody has detailed technical input on how/what to test for these 2 tools let me know either open post or private PM is fine.
Don't bother with credit monitoring services - they just try to charge you for something you can get for almost no cost (UK residents see here, USians here for details). See the Equifax -Credit Monitoring thread for a previous discussion on this. An easier (and free, assuming you pay off your card bills in full every month) option for UK users is to open an account with Cahoot, get their credit card and then apply for their Webcard service. This is an application that creates temporary card numbers restricted to a cash limit that you specify (to the nearest £5). If you use this exclusively when shopping online (and set the limit to just cover your orders) then you should never have to worry about online stores having their sites broken into since your card number would no longer work. For US users, American Express apparently offer a similar service (called Private Payments). However it may be worth asking your friend exactly how he lost his money - if he accessed his account from an (insecure) Internet café or his own computer was infected with a keylogger, then "safe hex" and proper security software, not CRAs are the solution.
