With the recent data breaches fresh in our minds, it’s more important than ever to protect yourself against identity theft. While you can’t prevent major breaches, you can do a few things to protect yourself in the event your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is exposed:

• Visit IdentityTheft.gov for a wealth of information and resources to report and recover from identity theft, including a list of steps to go through.
• Freeze, lock, or put a fraud alert on your credit report. For more information on this, read our blog detailing the difference between the options.
• Read NCCIC’s tips for Preventing and Responding to Identity Theft. This short article packs a lot of useful information.
• Get your credit report yearly via www.annualcreditreport.com. You can get your free credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies once a year, and you can choose to get them all at once or space them out.
• In addition to getting your official credit reports, monitor your credit activity and Vantage credit score (slightly different than FICO) for free at www.creditkarma.com. Credit Karma monitors many of the same aspects you find on your credit report, such as credit usage and payment history, and it helps you understand your credit score and how you might be able to improve it.

Even if you don’t think you are a victim of identity theft, it’s important to check out these resources so you know how to proceed if you are targeted. Identity theft is not always detected early on, so by monitoring your own information, you will be able to act sooner if it ever does happen (and we hope it doesn’t!).

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