LifeLock

Picture this: A tree-lined street filled with family homes surrounded by white picket fences and manicured lawns. Susan Johnson wakes up one morning in one of those homes, prepares breakfast for her family, sees her husband and kids off, and prepares to tackle the day.

But after waving goodbye to her family, she finds a letter in the mailbox addressed to her. It’s from a cell phone company welcoming her to a new contract, and it contains paperwork explaining the details of her new phone and the attached services.

There’s just one problem: Susan hasn’t signed up for a new cell phone. Susan has just become the victim of identity theft.

After several calls to the cell phone service provider, Susan convinces them that she has been victimized and they cancel the cell phone. Had she waited, her identity would no doubt have been exploited over and over again.

Susan didn’t understand why or how her identity was stolen.

“I’ve always been very careful about protecting my sensitive personal information,” she said. “I shred anything that might be of use to anyone, including correspondence and old bank statements.”

But Susan made one mistake. She signed up for a Facebook account, and in the process, she filled her online profile with as much detail as possible, including her e-mail address, home address, phone numbers and her date of birth.

All a modern-day criminal needs to steal the identities of people like Susan are a computer and an Internet connection. In Susan’s case, the crook just hacked in and found everything he needed, all in one convenient package.

When using social media sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, it’s important to lock down your security settings. Make sure you have your information tightly secured. And don’t enter every single detail; a criminal would just love for you to provide that information. You should also make sure to control what information will be provided to search engines.

By taking a cautious approach to your online activities as a whole, you can avoid Susan’s fate.

“I thought I was joining something self-contained (Facebook),” she said. “I thought it would be something that only my ‘friends’ would have access to. Boy was I wrong.”

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