Persuasive Essay About Identity Theft

886 Words2 Pages

Suraj Daru
Mr. Totaro/Mr. Wray
Financial Literacy
8/2/17

Identity Theft Essay

“An estimated 15.4 million consumers were hit with some kind of ID theft last year” (Sullivan, 2017). Although identity theft has become a huge problem domestically, many people are still careless about the safety of their personal information. People are still unaware of the dangers that these thieves pose, and the many methods that they use to gain personal information to gain financial assets. Although identity thieves have a variety of tricks up their sleeves to get one’s financial information such as dumpster diving and utilizing phishing scams, there are many ways to avoid loss, some of those being shredding important personal documents and purchasing an …show more content…

To begin with, shredding all of my personal documents with my information on them is a must, after my business has been finished with them. If found by a thief in the dumpster, this could lead to my identity being stolen. Secondly, I will be wary of strangers in my house that come to sell a particular product. This is because if my wallet is stolen, the thieves will have access to my credit card information and much more. Also, I will install anti-virus software that will detect fraudulent website that are posing to be real, “Keep virus and spyware software up-to-date on your laptop and home computer and use firewall software for protection” (Sullivan, 2016). This will protect me from falling to phishing scams over the internet. I will frequently check my mailbox, and report any suspected missing documents that I think might have been stolen by thieves. Some thieves may also change the billing address of my credit card. As Robert Siciliano, a cyber security and identity theft expert states, “...watch for change-of-address notices in your mailbox. If you stop receiving credit card statements, call the company” …show more content…

2011, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/brooklyn-man-pleads-guilty-online-identity-theft-involving-more-700000-reported-fraud.

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Siciliano, Robert. “10 Simple Ways Identity Thieves Steal Your Credit Card.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 May 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/robert-824.

Sullivan, Bob. “Identity Theft Hit an All-Time High in 2016.” Credit.com, Credit.com, 1 Feb. 2017, blog.credit.com/2017/02/identity-theft-hit-an-all-time-high-in-2016-165414/.

“What Is Pretexting?” Financialinfo.org, www.financialinfo.org/what-is-pretexting.html.

Wilson, Michael. “A Thief Tells How He Steals, and Where He Likes to Eat.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 July 2013,

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