ID Theft: Lessons from Sarah Palin

Regardless of your political affiliation, there’s something Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, can teach you about identity theft. For those who know you—or simply know about you—stealing your identity is a piece of cake.

Last week Palin’s yahoo email account was hacked and the alleged culprit is none other than a twenty-year-old college student who enlisted the help of Google and Wikipedia to reset Palin’s password. Birth date? Check. Zip code, well Wasilla only has two so that wasn’t too hard either. Where she met her husband? Well, that’s common knowledge too. So after typing in a few variations like “high school” and “school” the hacker eventually hit pay dirt by typing in “Wasilla High” and gained access to Palin’s account—and permission to reset her password.

Granted, Sarah Palin is a public figure who has been the talk of both the media and the water cooler ever since Senator John McCain announced her as his running mate in his bid for the White House last month. Her life has become significantly more public than that of the average American in the last few weeks. But that doesn’t necessarily make her more vulnerable than the average American when it comes to identity theft.

All of us have friends, and unfortunately most of us have enemies, that know at least a few common facts about us. If someone wants access to our personal information, it might not be as hard for them to get their hands on it as we would like to believe. After all, Palin wasn’t hacked by an expert. Instead, she was hacked by twenty-year-old David Kernell, son of Democratic Congressman Mike Kernell of Tennessee. If someone who is only a few years removed from being a child could hack into the personal email account of the potential future Vice President of the United States, imagine what an expert could do to you.

Protecting Yourself

Although you might not be a public figure, chances are you might have a blog, a Facebook account or some other online presence. And if you don’t, someone close to you might have one that features personal information about you. For instance, your wife might blog about how proud she is of you for getting that promotion at work—and your name, your title and company name are suddenly public knowledge. Your sister posts pictures of her recent visit with you and your family on her social networking site and suddenly strangers know your name and where you live. Personal information that could compromise the security of your identity is constantly divulged by people with non-malicious intent all the time.

With technology becoming more advanced every day, you don’t just have to worry about the information trail you leave behind, but you also have to worry about what someone else might be saying about you and where. While it might be impossible to completely wipe out all information about you that’s in the public domain, here are a few things you can do that may significantly reduce your risk of identity theft.

1. Choose to have an unlisted telephone number and address. If you have a listed phone number, all someone has to do is type the number into Google and your name, address and even a map to your house will pop up. This can make it extremely easy for identity thieves to reroute your mail to gain access to your credit accounts, or simply learn more about you so they can steal your identity. You can have your information removed from the Google database by simply clicking on your personal information and then filling out the removal request form. It would be in your best interest to take things a step further and pay the small fee to your phone company and have them make sure your phone number and address aren’t listed in any public directories.

2. Use made up answers for your online security questions. If common information about you has already been readily made public, you might want to consider using made up answers to your online security questions (at your bank and email provider websites) so that people might know your real answers still won’t be able to hack into your accounts. Or you use the correct answers, but in the wrong order. For the question asking you where you went to high school, type in the name of your childhood pet. That will really confuse would be hackers.

3. Routinely check your blog and social networking sites (and those of your friends and family) for any personal information about you. Edit out anything that is within your control, and gently approach any friends or family members who may be blogging about you in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Let them know you are concerned about identity theft, and kindly ask them to remove any information you feel may be putting you at risk.

4. Put as little information as possible in your company bio. Although it’s common for people to mention where they went to school in their company bios, that information might be all an identity thief needs to gain access to years worth of information that could lead to identity theft. Try not to include any revealing information that could aid an identity thief in his or her plight in your company bio—you never know who may see it.

5. Purchase ID Secure. Because some things about protecting your identity are just beyond your control, purchasing a product like ID Secure might greatly increase your peace of mind as well as the level of protection guarding your identity. For just $1 for the first month, and $12.99 a month after that, a professional identity monitoring company will use advanced web crawling technology to search the internet and public records to make sure that your social security number, credit and ATM cards and other personal information isn’t being fraudulently used in any way. ID Secure makes sure your identity is being monitored 24 hours a day seven days a week helping to keep it safe. If fraudulent activity is suspected, you will be informed immediately. You can learn more by clicking here.        

Sarah Palin may or may not be someone you plan on voting for, come November, but she is someone we would all benefit to learn from. Don’t leave yourself vulnerable to any form of identity theft by advertising information about what your passwords (or the answers to your security questions) might be. Even if the advertisement isn’t intentional, an especially attentive identity thief might be able to pick up on clues you didn’t even realize you were leaving behind.