How to Avoid Email Scams to Prevent Identity Theft

Protect yourself from identity theft.

Identity thieves are burglars breaking in through your computer. With identity theft running rampant, it's important to know how to protect yourself. One of the fastest, and sometimes easiest, way for people to steal your information is through your email. A way to prevent identity theft is to avoid the email scams.

Things You'll Need

• computer
• internet
• education
• awareness

Instructions

1. 

   Avoiding email scams to prevent identity theft can difficult, but is doable. People using email scams as a way to commit identity theft often ask for your personal information. Be cautious of any email asking for your Social Security number, email user name or password, birth date, or any other type of personal information.

2. 

   If an email is from an unfamiliar email address and you choose to read it do it with caution. You need to read carefully for typos, grammatical errors, or being poorly written. Although there are many people who have problems with spelling and such, many identity theft rings are coming from countries outside of the United States, so the grasp on English is not perfect. As well, identity theft has been reported from email scams that use an email address that "looked" legitimate because of the similarity to existing companies, for example, Bank of Amerika instead of Bank of America.

3. 

   Always protect your computer and email passwords. Identity thieves will try to break your passwords if they have your email address. Whenever you make a password, especially for bank accounts, make sure to create a strong password. Usually, this means including letters, numbers, and characters, for example: 1good*darn*password4me

4. 

   If you think someone tried to access your email account, contact your email provider. You should immediately change your password. If you have the software, run a virus check on your computer. It only takes a second for a thief to steal your information and make life messy.

5. Do not reply to a suspicious email. This is one of the biggest methods for preventing identity theft. Some email providers, such as Hotmail, have a section to report suspicious emails or a phishing scam. It's important to take an active role in preventing identity theft.

6. Never reply to a request for money.

Tips & Warnings

• listen to your gut -- if it doesn't feel right, follow your intuition

• if you get a message confirmation of your request to change your password, but you have not requested it, change your password immediately because this shows someone has tried to access your account, then change it again a little while later to be extra safe

• never give out personal information

• don't give out your email address to everyone or sign up with the same email address to all the things you do online

• check out the most common email scams at www.snopes.com.

Resources

• Avoid this common scam.
• Recognize overseas emails scams.
• Avoid Phishing on the Internet.
• How to avoid casting call scams.
• How to identify pyramid schemes.
• How to hide your IP address and surf the internet anonymously.