Monitor Your Identity and Protect From Identity Theft
There are many ways in which you can monitor your personal information, and protect it from falling into the hands of identity thieves.
Credit Report
Your credit report will hold details of any credit products linked to your name, and is the first stop to protecting yourself against identity thieves fraudulently applying for credit using your details. You can request copies of your credit report yourself from the three major credit reference agencies Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and get updates regularly throughout the year and check them through for any suspicious activity. However a much easier and more effective way to monitor your credit file is to sign up to one of the main identity theft protection services such as LifeLock, TrustedID or Identity Guard, as they provide 24/7 credit file monitoring and will alert you immediately if there have been any changes or suspicious activity.
Hard Copy Documents
Make sure you treat paper copies of your bank statements, utility bills and anything with your name, address and other sensitive details on as confidential, and keep them in a secure place and shred before disposing of them. Key identity documents should be kept in a locked, secure place and only carried around with you if it is strictly necessary. If you need to send off any key identity documents for renewal, or to prove your identity when changing key account details make sure they are sent using a secure, recorded mail service, and include a prepaid recorded envelope so that it can be sent back to you in the same manner.
Wallet
Try not to carry too many plastic cards around with you in your wallet, as if you lose it or it gets stolen you will have a lot of work to do to cancel all of your cards and get them re-issued. Just carry maximum of one debit and one credit card in your wallet, and if you are going somewhere like the beach where you will not be able to use plastic cards leave them at home and just take some cash instead.