Five Ways to Protect Against Identity Theft this Tax Season

Here are our five recommendatations for protecting yourself against identity theft this tax season. 

1. Guard your mail. Once your mail leaves your hands, it’s at the mercy of the people who handle it – so make sure you get it in the hands of the right people. Take your sensitive mail directly to the post office and make sure that when you check your mail, you don’t leave it in your mailbox – you retrieve it as soon as possible after it’s delivered or consider a locking mailbox.
2. Don’t keep tax information loose around the house or car. Let’s face it: there aren’t many places you’ll keep your tax information except a few places, like the house, car, or office. So make sure you don’t get cavalier about these locations. Make sure you can lock important documents away at home and that you protect them in your car and office.
3. Only deal with legitimate government organizations. Whether you like it or not, you have to pay your taxes and you have to report your information to the government. But you don’t have to report it to just about everybody else, so protect your information by dealing directly with the IRS and worrying less about third parties.
4. Protect your Social Security Number. Your social security number is a big target for identity thieves, and since taxes contain your SSN, you’re going to want to be careful about making sure they’re secure. Do a search on your computer for your SSN and archive any documents onto a CD and delete the files from your computer.
5. GetProactive identity theft protection. Checkout our top rated identity theft protection services to help stop identity theft before it happens from TrustedID, Identity Guard, LifeLock, ProtectMyID, and ID Patrol from Equifax.