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Data Protection as a Protection From Identity Theft

There are infinite reasons for a person to think about ways to protect against identity theft and fraud. When put into simple words, identity theft refers to one person using some other person’s identity as his own, without that person’s knowledge, especially for something that is unlawful. Stealing identity can be backed by various causes the most important of which is financial. The simplest and the most common form of financial identity stealing refers to using someone else’s credit card without the latter’s knowledge. When pick pockets manage to get access to another person’s wallet, the first thing they go for is the credit cards which they can use pretending to be the owner, especially when the cards do not have any photo identity. There can be other forms of identity theft also. People can pose as some other person to avail medication that they are not entitled to. This kind of medical identity theft is done for the sake of narcotic based prescription drugs. Criminal identity theft is very dangerous. It refers to a situation when the criminal in question poses to be another person when the police tries to arrest him or her. Throughout decades, stealing of identity has done great harm to the victims which makes it necessary for all to take some measures to protect against identity theft and fraud.

Data protection is vital, in fact, non negotiable. This data can be about medical information, financial information, social security information, information about work and employment, information on daily life so on and so forth. While much cannot be done about the last (that is information on daily life and activities) , a person can make conscious decisions to avoid leakage of vital information as far as the others are concerned. Some people are left speechless when they discover that their identities have been misused. They may think that they had ensured all kinds of data protection that a person can possibly make, why then did things go wrong? The answer may lie in disposal of items bearing vital information. This is to say that, people are usually not cautious while they dispose papers like credit card bills, statements of banks that have account number or, social security number mentioned in it. When these documents get deposited in the trash unscathed, the dumpster divers can make the best of it. Shredding the papers before disposing them is the best way to ensure data protection while data is stored in paper.

The identity thieves have, however, developed by infinite degrees and can easily hack into the digital data records of their victims very easily. Therefore, those who have their vital data stored in online format, must ensure that their firewalls are up all the time and that their antivirus does not expire. Installing file shredders is also a very good idea when to protect against identity theft and fraud. In case you have a file stored in your hardware containing vital information that you may not need, but can be misused by others if they get to it, then File shredders can ensure that these files will be completely deleted from the hard ware beyond recovery, thus ensuring data protection.