It’s not the end of summer yet, and there are still people taking off for relaxing and fun vacations. As August is still part of the peak season for burglary crimes, reminders on important DOs and DON’Ts are in order.

DO!

• Take pictures of every room in your house. Include valuable items and jewelery. These pictures will serve as proof for your insurers when you find anything missing when you get back home.
• Permanently mark valuable items with your postcode. You can use a commercial marking product. Keep a record of the make, model, and serial number, too. If you also want to safeguard large valuable items, you can refer to www.immobilise.com for some help.
• Don’t forget to leave contact numbers to your neighbor who’s going to be watching your property for you.
• It might be a good idea to have important papers and documents with a good friend or family, if not a safe.
• Inquire about your insurance and make sure you are updated on it.
• Remember to stop subscriptions or have your neighbor check on your mail and garbage. Remember to secure your home and activate your alarm system, too.

DON’T!

• Close your curtains. It’s like telling everybody that no one is home.
• Hide your jewelery in places that you consider smart but not so for the burglar. The toilet cistern and the hems of curtains are no longer secrets for burglars, for example, are no secret places for burglar.
• Put your home address on your luggage. You’re basically saying that you’re on vacation and your home is free for the steal.
• Leave bank statements, diaries, or bills around the house. The burglar might get away with identity theft, too, and that’ll be another rough rock in your shoe.
• Forget to lock all doors and windows, and the garage, shed, and other outbuildings.

We know how identity theft serves as a violation of our privacy and how it can ruin our lives. Luckily, we now have security freeze as a weapon against identity theft!

The security freeze law can enable people to control who has access to their credit reports. With security freeze, you will be sent fraud alerts and warning flags, and creditors should contact you before issuing credit.

Basically, the security freeze will put a lock on your credit reports which will only be lifted when you supply a personal identification number. If a thief tries to open an account under the name of a person using the security freeze, the creditor wouldn’t be able to obtain the report and would refuse to open the account.

There are about 37 states in the United States that have allowed security freeze to be used. It seems that even in these states, however, only a few know of the security freeze. The prospect of an additional security preventing identity theft interest many people. While it may not be a complete protection against identity theft, it nevertheless prevents the opening of new accounts that require credit reports, which is mainly the common form of identity theft.

You come home and you find that your television, your computer, and you other appliance are still safe. But then you find out the next day that your bank account was wiped empty and your personal credit trashed. The result of identity theft can be much more difficult to handle. It may not be as dangerous as finding yourself a victim of a burglary crime, but restoring your credit and clearing your name could take a lot of time as compared to replacing your valuables and personal possessions.

So what can you do to protect yourself from identity theft?

Being a victim of identity theft is not always due to your own carelessness. It could be that a company has inadequately protected your information, or that you were duped through the Internet. With the many technological breakthroughs, our personal information have become increasingly vulnerable.