Mail thieves could get access to credit card application offers, bank checks, paychecks, and more. Unless you pay for the added expense of a lock box or P.O. Box from the post office, you will never be able to completely protect yourself from mail identity theft. Even then, can you completely trust everyone who has touched your mail in order for it to get to your P.O. box?

The tips that follow are designed to limit your exposure to mail ID theft and other forms of ID theft that come from paper documentation.

1. Cut Down on Junk Mail

By cutting down on the amount of credit card and other offers that even your dog could get approved for:

• De-list your name from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) list at dmachoice.org.
• Opt out of credit and insurance offers from the three major credit bureaus at optoutprescreen.com. You can opt out for five years or permanently, if you choose.
• Check out my post on how to stop junk mail dead in its tracks for more tips.

2. Shred the Mail you do Receive

Get yourself a good paper shredder, and open every piece of mail that you do get to see if there is anything in there that needs to be shredded. Lock up everything you keep in some sort of locking file cabinet. Anything remaining can just go in your recycling.

3. Get a P.O Box

As mentioned earlier, this is one of the most fool-proof ways, if you are concerned about ID theft in your area. You can search for and buy a P.O. Box on the USPS site. Prices vary, but the smallest box option only costs $5/month. That’s not a bad price for the peace of mind it offers.

4. Protect Outgoing Mail Too!

Not only should you safeguard against mail fraud for incoming mail, but you should also be concerned about the outgoing mail. In order of safest, to least safe methods of getting your mail out:

• Drop off at your post office.
• Give directly to your mail carrier.
• Drop in a collection box.
• Put outgoing in your mailbox.

The latter is the one you should probably avoid.

5. Never Leave Mail in your Car or Laying Around Outside of your House

This one is pretty self explanatory.

6. Go Paperless and Track Incoming Bills and Tax Documents

Whenever possible, go paperless with your bills. Most companies are now offering small discounts on your bill (or abstaining from add-on fees) if you simply sign up for e-billing. Cutting down on the paper bills eliminates mail fraud potential, and helps the planet.

For bills or tax documents you can’t prevent, write down everything you should be receiving on an annual basis, and make sure you receive it. If you don’t receive what you were expecting, pay close attention to your credit report for unexpected credit inquiries or new accounts.

7. Get Free Credit Reports and Check them Consistently

You are entitled to three free credit reports annually through the government’s officially mandated site – annualcreditreport.com. Put it on your calendar to check one every 4 months.

Mail ID Theft Discussion:

• Have you ever been a victim of mail theft or mail fraud? What happened?
• What else do you do to protect yourself from mail identity theft?

Related Posts:

• Lifelock Review
• How to Improve your Credit Score
• What to do when your Purse or Wallet is Stolen
• 10 Tips for Avoiding Travel Theft

7 Tips to Protect Yourself Against Mail Identity Theft & Fraud Today is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

How I Got Burgled

We were at the airport ready to pass through security when we were re-directed because we had yet to pay our airport fee. Airport fee? Airport’s in Peru charge an ‘airport fee’ of $20 per ticket for domestic flights and $60 per ticket for international flights! Now that’s theft. Botta bing!

The airport did not accept credit cards, and we had zero cash on hand. I was quickly irritated at what seems to be a ridiculous fee and now I had to withdraw cash one last time from an ATM and pay the ATM withdrawal fees! We headed over to an ATM and withdrew the cash.

The goofy fee and anxiety towards getting to our gate made us lose focus for just a minute. And that’s all it took. I realized the next morning, while unpacking, that my debit card was gone. My wife quickly assured me not to worry because most ATM’s will shred your card if you do not grab it quickly enough and besides no one was in line behind us.

I checked our bank account and sure enough someone had successfully withdrew $200 not once, but twice, from our account! How could someone withdraw without knowing the pin number to my card?? I called the bank to have them cancel the card and inquire about the theft withdrawals. The bank told me that there are some ATM thieves out there that have small cameras attached to ATMs where they can look at to see what you are punching in for your pin number and this is what must have happened in my case. I had no idea this was possible. Lesson learned – the hard way.

How you Can Avoid Theft & Subsequent Hassle When Traveling:

Here are some recommendations that I have based on research, personal travel experience, and advice from my wife, who spent 3 months traveling in Europe:

1. Wear a money belt.They are super cheap and worth every penny. Store all your important documents such as your passport, credit cards, most of your cash, itinerary, and tickets here. This a great way to prevent pick-pocketing and you don’t have to worry about holding on to your wallet in your pocket at all times.
2. Always have your luggage attached to you. Backpacks vs. rolling luggage is a plus (plus it’s easier to get around). While traveling someone told us of how they stored their luggage under a seat on the bus, fell asleep and woke up realizing their luggage was stolen. Someone had cut a hole in their bag and took everything out from under the seat.
3. Carry your camera in a VERY secure location. Clean thoughts.
4. Distribute cash between multiple travelers and between locations on you. Carry the majority of your cash in your money belt and a small amount in a pocket or wallet for quick access. If robbed, you could also explain to a thieve this is all the cash you had.
5. Leave valuable jewelry such as wedding rings and watches at home.
6. Take a taxi back to your hotel at night. In Peru we had to have the restaurant call a reputable taxi company since there are some taxis ‘not to be trusted’.
7. Scan and email important documents to yourself. Scan your passport, credit cards (front for card number and back for phone number) and any other critical information you would need  quick access to if your personal items were lost or stolen. Email the scanned document to yourself and possibly one other person
8. Carefully shield the pin pad when making withdrawals at ATMs.
9. And always grab your debit card when finished at the ATM!
10. If you can use a credit card that doesn’t charge you interest on ATM cash advances vs. a debit card that won’t cover 100% of theft, you’d be wise to do so.

Travel Theft Discussion:

• What things do you do to protect yourself when traveling?
• What is the most valuable possession you’ve had stolen or lost when traveling?
• What’s the damn craziest travel story you have?

Related Posts:

• Lifelock Identity Theft Protection
• How to Limit Financial Loss from a Stolen Purse or Wallet
• Use an ISIC (International Student Identity Card) to get Student Discounts
• How to Avoid Mail Identity Theft

I Got Burgled! 10 Tips to Avoid Theft when Traveling Abroad is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Something about this season always makes me want to de-clutter things, particularly my finances. Here’s a list of the things that I’m doing this Spring (and typically do every Spring) to keep my finances in order. All can be accomplished in an afternoon. It will be time well spent.

1. Shred Old Financial Documents

De-cluttering your finances starts with reducing paper clutter. I’m conservative in keeping tax records going back 7 years and about 1 year on everything else. Beyond that, I have been shredding everything. I recently shredded enough documents to fill 5 paper grocery bags! I’d recommend getting a cross-cutting shredder that shreds 8 or more pieces at the same time and also shreds old plastic cards, like the Fellowes Powershredder. If you’re throwing this stuff in the trash, un-shredded, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.

2. Check your Free Credit Report and Clean Up Any Discrepancies

AnnualCreditReport.com (the real-deal website, mandated by the federal government) offers you three free credit reports annually. Space them out every 4 months to check for discrepancies and avoid taking any unnecessary credit score hits. For more on annualcreditreport.com, check out my post on how to make the most out of these free credit reports.

3. It’s Budget Cleanup Time!

Yes, I know you didn’t want to hear this one, but it’s oh so important. I wrote a pretty comprehensive post that includes a budget spreadsheet that I designed and used personally. Check it out, and see where the holes in the bucket are. Then plug them ASAP.

4. Stop Settling for Paltry Interest Rates on Short-Term Cash Holdings

For your emergency savings fund and other short-term cash holdings, you might as well earn best in industry rate yields on your savings. Right now, that is around 1.25%, but it changes frequently. The 5 online banks that I usually see at the top of the list for savings rate yields are Discover Bank, Ally Bank, EverBank, and Ing Direct. All offer a pretty comprehensive product offering if you want to expand beyond a savings account.

5. Move Long-Term Investment Funds From Savings & Checking Accounts to Investment Accounts

I give myself low marks for letting long-term investment funds sit in my bank account. With the market run-up, I missed out on thousands of dollars worth of capital gains because I simply wasn’t keeping up on moving those assets over to investment accounts. Don’t get caught sitting on interest rates of 1% or below and having inflation eat away at it.

6. Consolidate Your Brokerages

Having too many brokerage accounts is a great way to easily lose track of your financial allocations. I recently switched my IRA from ETrade to TradeKing. More recently, my wife rolled over her Roth and Traditional 401K from her last job to a TradeKing Roth and Traditional IRA. TradeKing offers IRA’s without annual fees or inactivity fees. And trades are just $4.95.

For non-retirement accounts, I moved my funds from Scottrade to Zecco last year. I give Zecco high scores for having zero annual fees, no inactivity fees, and free trades (however, they do charge an annual fee for IRA’s, which is why I prefer TradeKing for that).

7. Re-Allocate Investments

Once you have consolidated brokerage accounts, it’s time to do a little re-allocation. With the market having the run that it has had, now would be a great time to go through  your stocks, mutual funds, and other investments and make sure that the asset allocation is re-distributing to the correct portions. This might require moving some money around. In my case, it also means moving my accounts around.

8. Get the Best Debit & Credit Card Rewards

First off, cancel any credit cards you are not paying in full each month. Glad we cleared that up. If you ARE going to effectively use a credit card, make sure it is one that is giving good rewards. I average about 2% cash back on the TrueEarnings Card from Costco and American Express (check out my Costco American Express review for more info).

I also get 6% cash back from the best grocery rewards card on the market, the American Express Blue Preferred card.

Additionally, if you are using a debit card, you might as well get cash back on it as well. That’s where PerkStreet Financialcomes in. They offer a Visa® Debit Card that actually pays you back at a rate of 1% (versus the standard 0.4%). PerkStreet is currently offering a special promotion of 2% cash back for the next 4 months. Additionally, you are eligible for a bonus $50 just for funding your account with $250 and making 25 transactions in the first 90 days. Not bad!

What are you Doing to Spruce Up your Finances this Spring?

8 Personal Finance Spring Cleaning Ninja Moves is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

New FTC Regulations on Free Credit Report Advertising

Starting April 2nd, new advertising regulations will go into effect for all companies claiming to offer free credit reports. This, from the FTC:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued new regulations regarding the advertisement of “free credit reports,” which will go into effect April 2nd, 2010. The new regulations are designed to protect consumers from being misled by offers for “free” credit reporting, monitoring or other products or services that actually cost money.

Beginning April 2nd, the FTC will require prominent disclosures in all advertisements for “free credit reports” to prevent deceptive marketing. This disclosure will inform consumers that they can receive no-strings-attached, federally mandated free credit reports AnnualCreditReport.com or (877) 322-8228. The disclosure (found below) must also include a clickable button to “Take me to the authorized source,” along with clickable links to AnnualCreditReport.com and FTC.GOV.

Any website that offers free credit reports must include the following disclosure at the top of each page that mentions “free credit reports”.

The FTC has also upped their game by creating some catchy spoof video parodies of one of the websites the new regulations will impact. Wow, really? The government running funny advertisements? That’s a first.

Here’s one of them:

AnnualCreditReport.com is the Only Trustworthy Free Credit Report Site, Mandated by the U.S. Government

Over two years ago, I highlighted how to get 3 free credit reports annually, spread over the course of each year. The advice in that post is the same today. The only authorized credit report site (by law) that provides you with three free credit reports annually is annualcreditreport.com. You can get one free from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

I, for one, applaud them for cracking down on shady bait-and-switch advertisers.

Free Credit Report Discussion

• Have you been duped by the catchy jingle or other advertising for free credit reports? What was your experience?
• Do you approve of the FTC stepping in to regulate the advertising?
• Are you using annualcreditreport.com?

Related Posts:

• Get a Free Credit Score when Denied Credit
• How to Improve your Credit Score
• How to Build Credit when you don’t have a credit history
  

FTC Cracks Down on Free Credit Report Scams with Catchy Parody Spoofs is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

We typically always lock our vehicles, but figured that this time there is a chance that we did not. There were no signs of breaking and entering the vehicle, so the thief must have opened the door, popped the trunk, and taken the purse. Our best guess is that someone was sitting in the parking lot, watched her put the purse in the trunk, and grabbed it while we were on the walk. Quite disturbing when you think about it.

Here’s the Main Items that were Stolen in the Purse:

• The purse itself, and a wallet inside
• A cell phone
• A brand new digital camera
• Multiple credit and debit cards
• A few gift cards
• About $20 in cash
• Her drivers license

All-in-all, about $250 worth of stuff was stolen.

So what did we Learn from Getting things Stolen?

1. Never put something in your trunk that you can slide under the seat instead (purse/wallet, phone, camera). If you’re being watched, like we were, it’s incentive for your trunk to become a target. Don’t leave anything of value in sight. EVER. In our case, being seen putting of value out of sight was no different than leaving it clearly in view.
2. Your insurance deductible must be paid off before anything of value over the deductible is covered. Our auto insurance deductible is $2500, but only $250 worth of stuff was stolen. Therefore, nothing was covered. Had $3,000 worth of stuff been covered, we would have had to pay a $2,500 deductible, and then the insurance company would have covered the $500 difference between our deductible, and what was stolen.
3. Cancel your cards immediately. Luckily, we were able to cancel all cards before they were compromised. We first called on our debit cards and then hit the credit cards as soon as we found out the purse was stolen.
4. We’re thankful she only had $20 in cash in her purse. Really, do you ever need more than that with credit/debit cards? Limit the amount of cash you carry, and don’t carry checks with you unless you use them frequently for purchases.
5. Don’t leave valuable items like digital cameras in your purse. It’s bad enough to have something like a purse be stolen from you, our thief probably got all he wanted and much more.
6. Take a photocopy of all of your credit/debit cards, drivers license, and any other personal identifiers. These copies will come in handy when you need to cancel quickly and get replacements.
7. NEVER keep your social security card in your wallet/purse. My wife didn’t, and that would have been a mess neither of us would be happy to deal with.
8. Always keep your purse/wallet on you unless you have no option.

Identity Theft/Stolen Purse or Wallet Discussion:

• Have you been a victim of purse/wallet theft? Do you have additional lessons to share?
• What’s the most valuable thing you’ve ever had stolen?
• Let’s hear your personal story!

Related Posts:

• Review of Lifelock
• How to Protect yourself Against Mail Identity Theft & Fraud
• How to Get Free Credit Reports
• How to Improve your Credit Score
• 10 Tips for Avoiding Travel Theft

8 Ways to Limit Financial Loss from Theft of a Purse or Wallet is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

You may know LifeLock CEO, Todd Davis’s social security number, 457-55-5462. Most people have seen it, as Lifelock has plastered it everywhere as a symbol of their identity theft protection service.

But before signing on to Lifelock, realize that there are plenty of solid ways to protect yourself from identity theft that are absolutely, 100% free and legit. In many ways these free identity protection measures go above and beyond the paid services, such as Lifelock, that are out there. Let’s take a look at what Lifelock will do for you (for $10 per month), and how you can achieve the same results for free on your own. But if you’re forgetful and lazy like me, you might find Lifelock to be exactly what you need.

Benefit Claim #1

First, we ask the credit bureaus to set free fraud alerts on your behalf. Usually, this is done through our automated systems and the alerts are set within an hour. From time to time there may be a hitch and we have to do the first one manually, usually because they have a different address on file for you. If this happens, we’ll tell you right away and do what needs to be done to get the alerts set. (In case you’re wondering, we don’t charge anything more for this and our Total Service Guarantee is still in effect from day one.)

Free Option #1:Go to any of the three credit bureaus and request this on your own. You only have to do this with one bureau and they will notify the rest. And guess what? No ‘hitches’. Here’s the link to Experian’s fraud alert.

Benefit Claim #2

Second, unless your circumstances change and you tell us not to, every 90 days or so we ask the credit bureaus to do it again. You can do this for free if you’d prefer, but we make sure it gets done and that it gets done right. That’s where the oil change analogy we were talking about kicks in.

Free Option #2: In this case, the ‘oil change’ is putting four dates on your yearly calendar to renew after 90 days.

Benefit Claim #3

Third, we request that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists and we keep making the requests as they expire. Statistics show that this is one of the many ways that thieves hijack identities. Plus, all that mail is just so irritating. Many of our members tell us that this alone is worth the price. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, you can do this for free, but why not let us do it for you?

Free Option #3: Do you see the recurring theme in even their own benefits – ‘you can do this for free’? In this case, you can do this for free at optoutprescreen.com.

Benefit Claim #4

Fourth, we order your free credit reports on your behalf from the major credit bureaus and they are sent directly to you. We do this every year. You can also do this yourself for free.

Free Option #4: You can do this on your own for free at annualcreditreport.com. See my post on how to take advantage of this – ‘Smart Planning will get you 3 Free Credit Reports Per Year’.

Benefit Claim #5

Fifth, hassling with lost or stolen wallets is no longer a problem with WalletLock. If ever your wallet goes missing, just give us a call – anytime, anywhere – and a WalletLock specialist will help you contact each credit card, bank or document issuing company, cancel your affected accounts and complete the paperwork and steps necessary to replace your lost documents*, including your credit/debit cards, driver’s license, social security card, insurance cards, checkbook – even travelers checks – at no additional cost.

Free Option #5: It’s not really clear how much work the Lifelock Walletlock ‘specialist’ will do, but again, these are all things you can do on your own with a few phone calls. The disclaimer goes on to state that they don’t cover document fees, cash, or anything else.

Benefit Claim #6

Last, but certainly not least: If your Identity is stolen while you are a member of LifeLock, we’re going to do whatever it takes to recover your good name. If you need lawyers, we’re going to hire the best we can find. If you need investigators, accountants, case managers, whatever, they’re yours. If you lose money as a result of the theft, we’re going to give it back to you.

We will do whatever it takes to help you recover your good name and we will spend up to $1,000,000 to do it.

We don’t think you will see a guarantee like this anywhere else from any other company. If you do, let us know because we’d like to do business with them. There isn’t much fine print in our Guarantee. To see the details, click here.

If you have a reason to think that you will become a victim of Identity Theft, we can help you stop looking over your shoulder, because we’ve got your back.

No free alternative to this one, but the bottom line is that it may be a guarantee that they don’t back up. According to Rob Carey, a lawyer representing consumers in a class action lawsuit against Lifelock:

“The fine print in this $1 million guarantee is so limiting, we think it is almost worthless,” said Rob Carey, partner in the law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, who is representing consumers. “LifeLock buries the truth beneath a pile of inconsistencies and disclaimers so deep that we believe the intent is to mislead consumers so they don’t make claims.”

The bottom line is that Lifelock is not a scam, it’s just that you can do a lot of what they do for free. Lifelock might be worth it if you have the attitude “well, I could do this stuff for free, but I don’t want the hassle, and I’ll probably forget, so I’ll just let someone else handle it for a small price”. If you’re interested in checking out Lifelock – click here for more details.

Lifelock Discussion

• Are you willing to pay $10 to Lifelock per month for free services in order to save the time?
• Have you tried Lifelock? Was it worth it?

Related Posts:

• Credit Karma Review
• How to Protect Yourself Against Mail Identity Theft & Fraud

Should you Pay for Lifelock when you can Prevent & Monitor Identity Theft for Free? A Lifelock Review is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.