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How to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft

There are several steps you can take to protect yourself from identity theft. To begin, you should review your credit card and bank statements regularly for any discrepancies. When a criminal has access to your credit card number or bank account information, they will often make small purchases on your credit card to see if the account holder is checking for inconsistencies. Proactively checking for this information can prevent bigger purchases from being made by criminals.

Another way you can protect yourself from identity theft is by creating different passwords for all of your accounts online. If you use the same password for all of your accounts, it is very easy for a hacker to gain access to all of your personal information. You can prevent this by making a different password for each of your accounts. Never use easily accessible information like your birthday, name, or ZIP code in your passwords. 

In addition to our password protection tip, we also recommend that you enable two-factor authentication on your accounts. If a hacker gains access to your password and you have two-factor authentication set up, they will be required to enter a passcode in order to sign in to the account. This passcode will be automatically sent to a phone number of your choosing. 

Lastly, one of the easiest ways to protect yourself from identity theft is by simply collecting your mail every day and shredding personal documents before throwing them away. In some cases, criminals have been known to steal mail from mailboxes to gain access to personally identifiable information. Each day, remember to collect your mail and keep track of any documents that do not arrive. When you are finished reviewing these documents, always put them through the shredder before throwing them away.

Sign Up for an Identity Theft Protection Service

One of the best ways to successfully protect yourself from identity theft is to invest in an identity theft protection service. This type of service will monitor a wide range of accounts, alert you about unusual activity, and help you recover from damage. If you’re wondering where to sign up for an identity theft protection service in Clifton Heights, then BHCU is the place for you. 

BHCU is a credit union that protects your identity through our Identity Theft Detection and Recovery Services. The services included in this program include:

• Fully Managed Identity Theft Research, Remediation, and Recovery
• Lost Document Replacement
• Identity Theft Expense Reimbursement Insurance – up to $25,000
• Entitlement to Credit Monitoring

For BHCU share draft (checking) account holders, our Identity Theft Detection and Recovery Services are available at no cost. If you would like to take the first step in protecting yourself from damaging identity theft, then contact BHCU today to get started!