How to Prevent Identity Thieves from Opening Accounts in Your Name

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Everybody is getting hacked left and right. Anthem lost 80 million records. The US government got hacked and lost personal data for millions, all the way down to fingerprint data. Now Experian, a credit bureau got hacked. So how can you protect yourself from criminals opening accounts in your name?

Disclaimer: We’re not tax or financial advisors, so make sure to do your own research and maybe talk to a professional before taking any of the steps on this page. This article was written from our own experiences dealing with identity theft recently.

The Anthem hack was one of the biggest hacks ever, with social security numbers, addresses, and a lot more personal information being stolen, but it’s hardly the first — just last year, JP Morgan had 76 million customer records stolen and the Postal Service lost 800,000. And those were just the recent, high-profile hacks where personal information was lost, as opposed to Target, eBay, Sony, Home Depot, and other hacks where they mostly got emails and passwords. How many hacks haven’t been reported yet, or worse, not even noticed?

At this point it’s probably best to assume that criminals have access to enough personal information to open an account in your name, or that they will soon.

After all, you don’t really need anything but a name and a social security number to open a credit card account. Luckily there’s good news.

How to Deal with Personal Information Being Stolen