It’s that time of year again — the start of a new school year is approaching. For some of us, that means helping our children pack for their first year of college. This is an exciting time for student and parent. It might be a little nerve wracking trying to prepare them for their first year out of the house. One topic that is commonly often overlooked when sending your child off to college is the topic of preventing fraud and identity theft.
To ensure their identity is not compromised due to a mistake on their part, it is essential to talk to them about a few ways to secure their information.
Any mail that harbors sensitive, personal information should sent only to a permanent address (like your house that they will soon be departing from), not a temporary dorm mailbox. If personal mail is sent to a non-permanent mailbox, there is the possibility of another person receiving the mail and potentially using the information to their advantage. Another reason you would want important mail sent to a permanent address is to make sure that it is actually received. Often, students are so busy that they forget to check their mail on a regular basis. This might lead to significant problems. So, if anything is either time sensitive or has personal information on it, a good rule is to have it sent to your house.
Speaking of checking a college mailbox, freshman students are without a doubt going to bombarded with credit card offers left and right. Teach your child to shred those offers when they get them to prevent someone from filling out the offer in your child’s name but having a perpetrator get the new credit card without your child’s knowledge.
Next, make sure your child has a secure antispyware and anti-virus software loaded on their computer and other hand-held devices. This can help ensure that hackers and cybercriminals who are looking to infiltrate your child’s devices to get personal information are at least somewhat deterred from doing so.
And the last thing that you should teach your child before they go off to college is about secure Wi-Fi networks. Being in college means that they will be connecting to public Wi-Fi networks all of the time but teach them the difference between secured and unsecured networks. A secured network will likely encrypt the information that is send via the internet whereas an unsecured network opens up your child to vulnerability. If they connect to an unsecured type of network, almost everything they do online can be seen, even from other devices.
The bottom line is there’s really no better time than the present to become a LibertyID member for identity theft restoration protection. LibertyID provides expert, full service, fully managed identity theft restoration to individuals, couples, extended families* and businesses. LibertyID has a 100% success rate in resolving all forms of identity fraud on behalf of our subscribers.
*Extended families – primary individual, their spouse/partner, both sets of parents (including those that have been deceased for up to a year), and all children under the age of 25