Protect Your Financial Security

This post brought to you by LifeLock Twitter. All opinions are 100% mine.

We just bought our first new home, which involved transferring funds to different accounts, applying for a mortgage, filling out forms with our private information, etc and one thing weighed heavily on my mind: Is my information secure? Could my identity be stolen as a result of one of these transactions?

LifeLock is a company that protects individuals from having their identity stolen in a virtual world, where so much of what we do every day is online, and an enormous amount of our personal and private information is vulnerable. A variety of services supported by state-of-the-art technology allows LifeLock to help protect its clients, including:

• Proactive protection
• Advanced Internet Monitoring
• Credit Alerts
• Non-Credit Alerts
• Address Monitoring
• Lost Wallet Protection
• Credit Bureau Reports

I really can’t imagine trying to put the pieces back together again after a serious financisl security breach. I have a friend who discovered he didn’t qualify for a mortgage because multiple credit cards had been opened in his name, maxed out, and left delinquent in the previous two months. The aftermath involved police reports, setting up multiple alerts, being constantly vigilant, and unfortunately it will still take almost a year to achieve some kind of resolution, fix his damaged credit, and be able to apply for another mortgage.

What could LifeLock have done for him? It could have educated him on ways to protect himself, and alerted him as soon as anyone was using his information to apply for credit cards. LifeLock would have removed his names from lists that send preapproved credit card applications, and sent monthly statements for his entire families (for every version of their name) to his home that monitor public and court records as well.

LifeLock would have identified a threat, and responded to it.

At LifeLock, we help protect you against more than just credit fraud, we alert you whenever we detect your personal information being used to apply for wireless services, retail credit, utilities, and mortgage loans within our extensive network. If you become a victim of identity theft while you are a LifeLock member we will spend up to $1 million to hire experts, lawyers, investigators, consultants and whoever else it takes to help your recovery.

Facts About Identity Theft- Did You Know:

• Households earning over $100k/year have the highest identity fraud rate
• 11.6 million adults were victims of identity fraud in 2011 alone at a cost of $18 billion.
• 6.6% of victims are smartphone owners
• 6.8% of victims are social media users who use applications (and higher for those who “check in” using their smartphone GPS)
• If you have 6 characters in your password with no symbol, it only takes a professional hacker .000224 seconds to breach your password security (vs having 10 characters and one symbol, which takes up to 20 days for a professional to hack. How hack-friendly is your password?).

Alarming statistics? Yes. I’ve been hacked multiple times on Facebook as a result of using apps, including having an application charge my credit card without my permission. It’s plain to see how easy it could be for someone to hack my account for online banking, and infiltrate my overall privacy- very scary, and makes me see how LifeLock could give me a feeling of security.

Do you feel protected against identity theft? What experiences have you had with identity theft? Do you think LifeLock service could have helped you? Follow LifeLock on Twitter for more information.