Does Lifelock protect my bank account?

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January 9th, 2012 - Posted by Tasha

Q:  Does Lifelock protect my bank account?

A:  Lifelock does help protect your bank account from fraudulent use (and a whole lot more – see our Lifelock review for details). The basic Lifelock service will monitor the Internet black market for fraudulent usage of your bank account number and alert you if it occurs.You'll be prompted to enter your personal information during enrollment, so make sure to add your bank account numbers if you want to monitor for them.

Their enhanced Lifelock Ultimate service includes Internet black market monitoring, plus additional protection for your bank accounts. Lifelock Ultimate scans for changes to contact information on your existing checking and savings accounts, thus helping reduce account takeover by alerting you when your account holder information changes. It will also alert you if new checking or savings account are opened in your name.

We really like Lifelock (and Lifelock Ultimate) as an identity theft protection service. And right now Lifelock is offering NextAdvisor readers a free 30-day trial as well as 10% off, so it's a great time to try it out at no charge.

New Facebook privacy concern: your cell phone number

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August 11th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

Facebook has a history of fishy privacy practices, so we're not surprised at its latest grab for user information. If you use a Facebook app on your cell phone, have provided your phone number to it for "increased security," or entered it into your profile under certain sharing settings, your data could be at risk.

Rumors abound that Facebook is now making public contact lists from smartphones that use Facebook Mobile. Although Facebook denies that this is true, a longstanding feature that syncs contacts from your phone to your Facebook account has been discovered by many. This means that Facebook has probably stored every number in your phone on a server somewhere.

You can see the phone numbers of all your contacts, which means that they can probably see your phone number. Regardless of the method Facebook may have used to get your number, here's what you should do:

1. In your phone's Facebook app, tap the Friends icon in the main menu. Then in the upper-right of the screen, click Sync.

2. When you're on Facebook, click on Account at the top-right of the screen. Then click Edit Friends. On the left side of the screen, click on Contacts. You'll see this text on the right: "If you would like to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook, you need to disable the feature on your mobile phone and visit this page." Click to go there, and then click the Remove button.

3. Double-check the privacy settings on your Facebook account to make sure that only the right people are seeing your number. We recommend deleting it completely.

For those worried about protecting their privacy, we recommend identity theft protection. Companies such as Identity Guard, Trusted ID, and LifeLock monitor your credit score and other records and alert you of fraudulent activity. Plus, NextAdvisor offers you a discount!

Woman gets (fake) tattoo of Facebook friends

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June 8th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

We couldn't let this news pass by without commenting. This woman has 152 Facebook friends, and she took video showing her getting a sleeve tattoo of profile picture thumbnails of every single one. Although it turned out to be nothing more than an advertising stunt, such a tattoo could raise some serious questions. She claimed to have gotten the permission of all of her friends, but could having your face on somebody's body put your identity at risk?

We say probably not, in this case. The images are pretty small, and no names are given. The biggest problem anyone might have with this tattoo is its lack of clarity!

Congressman Weiner reminds us to keep our info safe!

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June 6th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

Another great tip learned from Rep. Weiner: Never take compromising photos of yourself, and definitely never send them to anyone!

So it turns out that Representative Anthony Weiner's (D-New York) Twitter photo scandal wasn't a hack after all. But let it still be a reminder to keep your confidential information safe with identity theft protection services and to change your password!

6 ways to stay safe on Facebook: Managing your privacy to thwart identity theft

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June 3rd, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

Eleven percent of identity theft crimes occur online.

Let's face it: Almost everyone's on Facebook, and if you're not, chances are you'll succumb to social pressure to sign up eventually. It's a great way to connect with friends and family all over the world and easily share your experiences with others. However, it's not a good idea to go sharing personal information willy-nilly.

Facebook has made a number of updates to privacy settings since we wrote this popular post in 2008. So here we've collected an updated list of six ways to manage your privacy on Facebook and keep your personal information safe:

1. Limit the amount of personal information available on your profile.

A poll of Facebook users commissioned by NextAdvisor.com found that 27% of respondents listed their full name, date of birth, phone number, and email address on their Facebook profile. An additional 8% of respondents included all of that information plus their physical address on their profile. Many Facebook users also list other personal data, such as their spouse or significant other's name or birthday. In the hands of identity thieves, that type of information can be dangerous.

For example, an identity thief may be able to use your home address and phone number to submit a change of address form with the United States Postal Service and have your mail forwarded. This would allow access to even more sensitive information in order to open financial or other accounts in your name.

Savvy identity thieves can use contextual information in your profile to hack into online accounts. It can tip them off to potential user names and passwords you may use. Once an online account—whether an email, credit card, or other account—has been accessed, it can cause even further harm. It just gets easier for identity thieves: A recently released Android app can hack Facebook accounts if they are open on the same wireless network! Our recommendation is to limit the amount of personal information that is available on your Facebook profile:

• Never list your full date of birth, phone number, or physical address on your Facebook profile. Your real friends and associates will likely already know this information, so including it on your profile will only increase your risk of being victimized.
• Limit the amount of contextual password clues on your profile pages. Identity thieves know that many people use their birthday, a spouse or significant other's name or birthday, an anniversary date, mother's maiden name, pet's name, or other personal information as passwords on their personal accounts. It is also a good idea to make sure your online passwords don't include these types of personal items.

2. Proactively manage your privacy settings.

There are many components to managing your Facebook privacy settings. But we've broken it down for you here:

Sharing

Facebook's main purpose is sharing. However, like many people, you might have certain things you only want to share with only your networks, your friends, or just a chosen few. Luckily, Facebook makes this easy. When you click "Privacy Settings" under your "Account" tab, you'll see a list of what you share and with whom you share it.

For each shared item, such as "My status, photos, and posts" and "Phone numbers and address," you can choose one of three basic user categories: "Everyone," "Friends of Friends," and "Friends Only." Remember that "Everyone" means pretty much everyone, sometimes including other sites. You'll see the privacy settings that Facebook recommends, but we prefer the conservative "Friends Only" setting on all of your profile information to safeguard your information.

At the bottom of this page is a "Customize settings" link, where you can fine-tune your settings. Perhaps you don't want anyone to be able to view "Places you check in to." So you'd select "Only Me" for that category. If you wish to let your friends know when you're out on the town but want to keep your coworkers out of it, you can choose to block that information only from certain users. If you don't want the world knowing when you're at, say, the doctor's office, we also recommend you uncheck the "Enable" box next to "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in." To make sure everything looks right, click "Preview my profile," where you can view your own profile as a member of the general public or as a specific Facebook user.

Connecting

Connecting is not controlled on the Privacy Settings page but on a separate screen you access by clicking "View settings" at the top of the "Choose Your Privacy Settings" screen. By default, your name, profile picture, gender, and networks are visible to everyone.

Set these limits to what you're comfortable with. You could set everything to "Friends only," but you'd cut down on the chances of old friends and co-workers finding you. Instead, set them based on how private you think that information is or should be. For example, never make your high school visible to "Everyone" if you've used "What's your high school mascot?" as a security question on another website. We do recommend setting stricter visibility limits on "See your friend list." Such information could help identity thieves to engage in a little social engineering or get information such as your mother's maiden name (if, you know, your mom is your friend).

We feel the same way with "See your current city or hometown" and "See your likes, activities, and other connections." This publicly viewable information can help phishers and other social hackers target attacks toward you.

Finally, you can also access "Preview my profile" from this page.

Apps and Websites

Go back to the main privacy page, scroll down to the "Apps and Websites" section at the bottom left, and click "Edit your settings for using apps, games and websites."

One of the most useful tools is at the top. "Apps you use" allows you to turn off all applications or remove unwanted or spammy applications. You'll probably be surprised just how many applications you've said "yes" to. If you find ones that look suspicious or you simply don't want anymore, click them to expand. You can then view the last time the app accessed your data or remove the application altogether.

But perhaps most important to your privacy is how your information is used by other sites and apps. Click "Edit settings" next to "Info accessible through your friends." It will bring up a pop-up window that you can use to control which of your information is available to applications, games and websites when your friends use them. We recommend that you uncheck these items.

Next, you can control who can see your game and app activity. This button functions much like the other buttons on the main privacy page.

If you're not wild about the websites you visit knowing a lot about you, edit your "Instant personalization" settings, and uncheck the box at the bottom. This prevents Facebook's select partner sites from accessing the information that you've set as visible to everyone.

Lastly, we recommend that you disable public search. This setting controls whether information you share with everyone shows up in searches on and off Facebook. If someone Googles you, do you want your Facebook profile to show up? If it's a childhood friend, perhaps, but if it's an identity thief, you might think otherwise. There's a small "See preview" link here, too, so you can see how your page would look to someone arriving at your profile from a search engine.

Block Lists

There are many reasons you might want to block a person or application from seeing your Facebook profile. So when you click "Edit your lists" at the bottom center of the main privacy page, you can enter names of your Facebook friends or email addresses of people who are not your friends and click "block user." This means that person cannot be your friend or interact with you on Facebook, except inside apps or games you both use.

You can also block invitations from this screen. Is a friend who lives across the continent spamming you with invites that you can't possibly accept, or does an otherwise nice pal keep inviting you to play FarmVille even though you've declined multiple times? Type the name into the fields to block only their invitations.

Finally, you can view your blocked applications from this page. Blocking an app means it can't contact you or use your information anymore. To block an app, though, you need to go to the app's Facebook page and click "Block app."

Additional Privacy Controls

Facebook gives you still more options for privacy control. Each time you post a status update, link, status update, photo, or video, click the lock icon below it to choose who can see it. Note that this overrides whatever you have set for "Posts by me" in the Privacy settings.

You also now have more control over your apps. By default, they can only see what you've made visible to everyone. If an app needs to access more to operate, they must ask you for permission (via a box that pops up when you add an app), and they are not allowed to ask for more than is necessary for them to work.

The final control is over tagged items. When you're tagged in a photo or video and you want to override the default setting you selected for tags on the privacy page, remove the tag, which will also keep it from showing up on your profile. Remember that this doesn't keep the owner of the photo or video from sharing the picture (sans your tag) with people who aren't your friends.

These are our best suggestions for using Facebook's privacy settings. CEO Mark Zuckerburg maintains that users can expect privacy from Facebook's advertisers. Facebook doesn't sell personal data to its advertisers, but some ads include a Like button, and some or pair a profile picture of a friend who "liked" the ad or company with it to make it more relevant to you. And when you see Facebook content on another website, that site doesn't receive any of your profile information.

Still, with all the data floating around out there and the potential for identity thieves to socially engineer themselves into our lives, consider an identity theft protection service.

3. Only accept friend requests from people you know.

According to another recent Facebook poll commissioned by NextAdvisor.com, 49% of respondents said that they accept some or all friend requests that they receive from people they don't know. What many Facebook users may not realize is that by accepting friend requests from people they don't know, they are potentially opening themselves up to identity theft or related crimes. As a general rule, we suggest that Facebook users only accept friend requests from people that they already know or whose identity they can verify through some other means. Here are some ways to safely add new friends on Facebook:

• When you receive a friend request from people you already know, verify that they are who they say they are by sending them an email or giving them a phone call. It is easy for someone to set up a phony profile under the name of someone you know and trust in order to extract additional information from you.
• If you don't recognize the person who is making the friend request, feel free to ask how he or she knows you by sending a Facebook message before accepting. If you get no answer or a suspicious one, you can investigate further or simply ignore this friend request.
• Some experts believe that social networks like Facebook may become the next target of sophisticated phishing scams designed to steal your online passwords or other personal information. If you receive a friend request or other information over email purporting to be from Facebook, log into your Facebook account directly rather than clicking on any links in the email to verify that the communication is actually coming from the Facebook system.

4. Limit the amount of check-ins and "time and place" data that you expose.

Facebook gives users many opportunities to broadcast their schedule and whereabouts to their friends. Whether it is a simple status update or detailed itinerary, criminals can use information about your current or upcoming whereabouts to victimize you in a number of ways.

For example, if you publicly announce an out-of-town vacation or plans to attend a certain event, criminals can use this information to determine when your home may be most susceptible to a burglary. This could open you up to any number of forms of identity theft or worse. Also exercise caution when you "check in" somewhere using Facebook Places. If you verify that you are at a faraway location, you could endure similar consequences.

In general, we strongly recommend that Facebook users not publish specifics about whereabouts and schedules.

5. Remember that even people you know can be identity thieves.

Unfortunately, several recent studies show that a significant number of identity theft victims know the person who victimized them.

Javelin Research found that a shocking 43% of identity theft crimes are perpetrated by people whom the victim knows, such as friends or family members. Additionally, the most common perpetrators of identity theft against children are the child's parent.

We strongly recommend that, even if you know and trust all of your Facebook friends, you still follow all these tips to prevent yourself from falling victim to identity theft.

6. Consider an identity theft protection service.

Identity theft, both online and in the real world, remains a growing threat to all Americans. We recommend that all consumers consider using a proactive identity theft protection service, such as Identity Guard or LifeLock, to protect their identity.

Each identity theft protection service is different, but most will do the following:

• Monitor your credit report and other personal information for fraudulent use.
• Provide you with identity theft insurance that will reimburse you on costs and expense you incur as a result of being victimized.
• Provide you with copies of your credit report.

You can learn more about the various benefits of identity theft protection services and about the specific services we review by visiting our identity theft protection service guide and comparison.

While social networks like Facebook can be fun and productive services, it is important for users to be aware of the risks that they pose. Taking proactive steps to protect your identity on Facebook will only improve the amount of enjoyment you can get out of the service.

Bank of America: one more reason why you need ID theft protection

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May 24th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

We here at NextAdvisor like to harp on identity theft protection. Why? Because you need it. You never know when, for example, workers at your bank will leak confidential information about your accounts to scammers, resulting in more than $10 million in total losses, which is what happened recently at Bank of America.

Even if you entrust your entire financial life only to big-name companies, this event illustrates why you should take the extra step of getting identity theft protection for yourself and your family to combat fraud. We think that the best companies for ID theft prevention are Identity Guard Total Protection (for the most complete ID theft protection), TrustedID (for families), and LifeLock (for the best value). Click on those links to see our reviews of these services (you'll find even more here), and don't go another day vulnerable to identity theft!

How often are children's identities stolen?

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May 12th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

The following is an actual user-submitted question:

Q. How often are babies' and children's identities stolen?

A. Good question. It might not seem worth it to check your child's credit reports, but according to the FTC, 400,000 children have their IDs stolen each year, 51 times more often than adults. Why? With clean credit histories, kids are easy targets, and many thefts go unnoticed for years, until the child—now an adult—applies for a credit card, loan, or mortgage. So if you want to keep your children's identities safe, consider our favorite identity theft protection services for families: TrustedID and LifeLock.

Can I sign up for and pay annually for an identity theft protection membership service?

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May 3rd, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

The following is an actual user-submitted question:

Q. Can I sign up for and pay annually for an identity theft protection membership service? I prefer to pay annually in lieu of monthly.

A. When you subscribe to a service such as identity theft protection, often it's more convenient or fiscally responsible to make one larger payment a year rather than a small one each month. Luckily, several of the services we review offer annual prepay options, and sometimes it even saves you more money:

TrustedID, $84.12 per year and up: This service monitors a number of different accounts for you and provides you with anti-spyware protection and one three-bureau credit report each year. We think it's the best value of the services out there, especially for families, because it offers a free 14-day trial and a 15% NextAdvisor discount.

LifeLock, $99 per year and up: This service gives you a free 30-day trial and monitors a wide variety of public records as well. NextAdvisor can offer it to you for 10% off. It's also a pretty strong value; it just doesn't have as many features as TrustedID.

Suze Orman's Identity Protector, $125.04 per year and up: Rounding out our annual prepay offers for identity theft protection services is Suze Orman's Identity Protector. When you sign up with Suze, you'll get three-bureau credit scores and reports. Plus this option bears the name of finance guru Suze Orman.

So whether an annual payment fits better into your budget or is less of a hassle, any of these three services could be great choices for you.

Do identity theft protection services monitor all three credit bureaus on a daily basis?

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April 6th, 2011 - Posted by Tasha

Q:  Do identity theft protection services monitor all three credit bureaus on a daily basis?

A: Our top rated Trusted ID IDEssentials monitors your credit reports at all 3 credit bureaus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  You'll receive same day alerts for any changes to your credit reports, including (but not limited to) new lines of credit being opened, inquiries into your credit reports, address changes and name changes.

Trusted ID also monitors the Internet black market and public records for the use of your Social Security number, credit cards, and bank accounts.  In addition, you'll get credit scores and reports from all 3 credit bureaus, medical record protection and anti-virus computer software.  Overall it's a extremely comprehensive package, and it's even a great deal.  Right now you can sign up for a free 14-day trial and discounted rate of $10.42 per month (paid annually).

What information do I need to give for identity theft protection? How quickly can it be activated?

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April 5th, 2011 - Posted by Sarah

The following is an actual user-submitted question:

Q. What information do I need to give for identity theft protection? How quickly can it be activated?

A. Most identity theft protection services, including top-rated Identity Guard Total Protection, Trusted ID, and LifeLock, require similar information: first and last name, full street address (with state and ZIP code), phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, and email address. If you haven't lived at your current address for at least the past six months, you will need to provide your previous address.

You will also need to give your credit card information; even though most companies offer a free trial, they need to start billing you after that trial period has passed unless you cancel the service.

Each service takes a different amount of time to kick in. For example, both Identity Guard Total Protection and Trusted ID begin as soon as you sign up, but others, such as Protect My ID, require more time for parts of the service — the credit monitoring can begin immediately, but the account protection depends on when you enter that information for the accounts and how long it takes to verify.