It seems that every time you pick up a newspaper these days there's a scare story about identity theft. If someone isn't trying to hack into your online bank account from the other side of the world or clone your credit card whenever you use a hole in the wall then there's always some bright spark around to leave a laptop in the back of a taxi that contains yours, and millions of other people's, personal details. It's no wonder then that people are considering personal document destruction as a way to safeguard their identity and cut down the risk of them being the victim of the new type of crime. The market that has grown around this worrying trend is now very profitable with companies offering services as wide ranging as computer hard drive back up, encrypting data and document destruction. It could be called paranoia but to many it is just a worthwhile and intelligent response to a very real threat. With examples of this new type of cyber crime on the increase it looks like the industry aiming to counteract and stop it is also likely to grow. For an individual the threat of identity theft, or ghosting as it has become known, is very real. It's not just the elderly or vulnerable who are targeted, increasingly the stories we hear are of supposedly tech-savvy people being duped. People who think they'd spot a scam a mile off are now just as at risk as any other group. There are now several products on the market which can help to give a person piece of mind when they are using credit cards, computers or dealing with paperwork. Data protection doesn't just relate to big business. We all have important personal data stored on our computer even if we're not aware of it. Computers store web pages we have visited, the pages it stores can contain personal data like addresses, telephone numbers, passwords and numerous other things that a cyber criminal might be able to use. Thankfully there are now some very good software packages that can help protect this data. Some is aimed at the single user home computers; some is aimed at larger companies. It all serves the same purpose which is to protect your data. Used in conjunction with some simple measure that you can carry out yourself, installing software to protect your data when online, can be very effective. The advice is to have different passwords for different sites and different purposes. The thought being that if everything is the same then everything is at risk; think of it as damage limitation. It is also recommended you never give out your personal details online; in chat-rooms or social networking sites. No matter how trivial it may seem you'd be surprised how easy it is to be fooled into giving criminals enough information for you to be at risk. Once you've taken precautions to protect yourself 'virtually' it's time to protect your printed documents. Document destruction has become popular on the back of lots of well publicized cases where people's identities have been stolen by people getting hold of old bills, bank statements and letters from bins. It's no longer enough to discard your old paperwork, you must now dispose of it in way that means it cannot be used to learn anything about you. On the back of this shredding and paper shredders have become a familiar sight in homes and offices around the world. Shredders are now relatively inexpensive and provide piece of mind when it comes to identity theft. Many companies also offer a large scale document destruction services to big businesses whose employees are not only prone to identity theft but are prone to attack on a much larger scale; corporate crime on a large scale is now a very real threat.
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