10 Easy Things you Can Do to Prevent Fraud after National Consumer Protection Week Ends

National Consumer Protection Week 2007 officially comes to an end tomorrow. We've had a great week on CreditBloggers.com talking about the different scams and frauds that are out there. Now, let's conclude the week with a list of 10 simple things anyone can do to prevent fraud. This list was compiled by our team of credit experts as part of our National Consumer Protection Week materials:

1. Put a shredder in your kitchen. A recent Staples study found that most junk mail ends up in the kitchen trash, not in the office. Make sure that all your credit card statements and other sensitive mail are shredded before being thrown away.
2. Don’t pay money to get money. The most common scams right now involve asking consumers to wire money in order to supposedly get a larger amount in return.  Credit.com posted a warning about one of these scams surrounding loan offers a few months ago.
3. Opt-out of pre-approved offers.  Call 888-5-OPT-OUT or go online to OptOutPrescreen.com to dramatically reduce the number of credit card offers you receive in the mail.  For any you do receive, shred them immediately.
4. Check your credit reports regularly. It bears repeating; it’s a crucial step to guard against identity theft. Order your free annual reports at www.annualcreditreport.com or sign up for a monitoring program that scans your credit data automatically.
5. Help relatives check their credit, too. Children and the elderly are often targeted for scams. You can check your children’s credit reports by contacting the credit bureaus’ fraud offices. And you can lend your internet expertise to help elderly relatives check their credit data online.
6. Know thy scams.  Become aware of frequent fraud offenses. For a quick cheat sheet on the top ten scams of 2006, visit ConsumerAffairs.com. 
7. Protect your home computer.  Install security software to foil identity thieves against high-tech viruses and spyware.
8. Audit your information. Check your desk at work, home office, and online accounts for potential security risks. Data stored in emails and unlocked files could be exposing you to fraudsters. Try to reset your online passwords regularly.
9. Investigate online. If something seems suspicious to you, see if\ you can find some information about the company or offer online before deciding to proceed. Reliable companies should have plenty of records online and should be easy to contact in person.
10. Report close calls. The FTC tracks consumer fraud complaints and uses this database to assist law enforcement around the world. If you are contacted by a fraudster, add your report to this library of data.

Have a great weekend! We'll see you back here on Monday when we resume our normal blogging on debt issues, credit scores, loans, credit cards, personal finance and more!

Comments

[bad credit loan]

really amazing and informative blog thank you so much!

[andy]

Well I agree that crime agianst the elderly is tragic so is the crime agianst firms that service the elderly and when the work is done they call foul and the police and the poor sap that just worked all day gets charged with fraud just becaues the elderly person says "I am to old did not understand they took advantage " bull I say if a person elderly or young does not have the capacity to think then they should be in a home