Be Suspicious
Confirm that email addresses are legitimate perpetrators make minor changes that mimic legitimate email addresses. Wire instructions will ONLY come from the title and closing agent, NEVER from the lender.

Confirm
Confirm over the phone or in-person any change in wiring instructions, even when the email and/or text message seem legitimate and authorized.

Keep Information Close
Never give out personal information, social security or credit card numbers over the phone unless you initiated the call directly or trust the source completely.

Verify with Attorney/Title Company
Call to validate that the funds were received. Detecting that you sent the money to the wrong account within 24-hours gives you the best chance of recovering your money.

Use a Secure Network
Never make credit card purchases on public computers or when using public wifi. Always use a secure and trusted network.

Contact Us Immediately!
If you feel you have been affected by wire transfer fraud or other suspicious activity, please contact us immediately.

Freezing Your Credit

Freezing your credit is a way to limit most access to your credit file at each of the three credit bureaus for free. Each bureau offers multiple ways to place a credit freeze (also known as a security freeze), including online and in-app options. Once you've learned more about how to freeze your credit, consider placing a credit freeze if you suspect that you have been the victim of identity theft.

Once we are complete with your transaction, freezing your credit will help protect against identity theft. It restricts access to your credit report to minimize the chance of thieves opening new accounts in your name. Since creditors need to view your credit report before issuing credit, this is a way to stay ahead of fraud and is especially smart given that our personal information has already been compromised through creditors.

Click on the links below. It’s absolutely free, and will not affect your credit score.

• Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

• Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/

• TransUnion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

How do I Lift a Credit Freeze?

The same webpages used to set up credit freezes can be used to remove or suspend them, also known as unfreezing your credit. All three bureaus also provide instructions for lifting a freeze by phone or using the credentials connected to your freeze at each bureau.

In addition to your ability to permanently unfreeze your credit, you may have the option to lift the freeze temporarily by indicating a length of time (one day, one week, etc.) you want the freeze to be suspended. Policies vary by bureau so make sure you understand what your options are before you begin the process.

When you request by phone, your credit will be thawed within one hour and in near real time when you create or log in to your Experian account to toggle your settings to "Unfrozen."

Identity Theft Is a Growing Business

Identity theft is a business for perpetrators who do this to enrich themselves. They use the stolen identity to impersonate someone else or sell someone's identity to other criminals.

The crimes involving identity theft are growing at an alarming rate. Every year, identity thieves steal billions of dollars from millions of victims. Studies have identified the following significant trends:

• There has been an increase in incidence, primarily by growth in existing card fraud and spike in card-not-present transactions

• Account takeover problems have bounced back

• There has been an increase in new account opening fraud

WHO ARE THEY AND HOW DO THEY DO IT?

An identity thief can be anyone. They are often professionals who display confidence. Identity thieves can also be family, friends, or familiar with the victim. There are many different ways identity thieves can obtain personal information, including:

• Cybercrime: Financial institutions and other businesses are exposed to breaches in data security due to increased dependence on electronic data and computer networks to conduct daily operations and growing pools of personal and financial information transferred and stored online. Breaches are at an all-time high, with hundreds of breaches and millions of records exposed every year.

• Stealing mail: Stealing mail provides the identity thief information from banking and credit card statements. Identity thieves may try to obtain a new debit or credit card on an existing account and conduct unauthorized transactions.

• Diverting mail: Unauthorized address changes divert mail to avoid discovery of fraudulent activity. Before stealing someone's identity and taking over an existing account, identity thieves will often have the statement address changed so that the customer is less likely to notice the unauthorized charges.

• Responses to unsolicited email (spam): Responses to spam inquiries asking users about account or identification information provide identity thieves with large amounts of information for little effort.

• Dumpster diving: Going through trash for any sort of personal information, such as Social Security numbers, account numbers from banking or credit card statements, phone numbers, or discarded preapproved credit card offers is called dumpster diving.

• Pretext calling: Pretext callers try to mislead a financial institution employee into believing the thief on the phone is a customer and providing personal information or account numbers. Pretext callers may then use the information gained to steal the identity of a customer.

Protect Your Identity on Social Media

Since social media first hit the internet, we began sharing things about ourselves, which is not bad as it allows us to connect and communicate ideas fast and conveniently. What can be a major security issue however, is over-sharing, whether due to ignorance (about who might be snooping on us) or simply being out of touch with online safety.

So what are some “best practices” for ensuring your identity?

• Think of all the most personal, sensitive information about you – including your family and business – that you would never want a stranger to know about. Now ask yourself why there would ever be a need to share it publicly via social media?

  While telling a friend that you are going on vacation is perfectly fine, posting this information online is not a smart idea. It feels great to tell the world you are on a sun-kissed beach, but here’s your post’s unintended subtext: “I’m still out the country and nobody’s home!”

• On the topic of photo uploads in general, be aware of the ‘other stuff’, like background items such as bank statements or confidential work documents being pictured.

• Customize your social media Privacy Settings. Toggling specific options can really help tighten down on security, like limiting what kind of audience can view your posts and how much strangers/yet-to-be-accepted friends can see on your profile/posts.

• It was once cool to brag about your friend count, but now it is much wiser to focus on building a list consisting of true friends or at least those you have met.

• Keep an eye on your friends request, you will often find them disguised with a picture of a hot girl or guy. It’s a trick to get you to friend them.

• Username, do not reveal sensitive information (such as your birthday and location), strong passwords to protect your accounts, and be vigilant when it comes to spotting bogus advertisements and posts built by cyber ‘phishing’ scammers.

• Finally, ensure your computer has up-to-date antivirus and anti-malware suites for fundamental protection, and always remember to logout from social media accounts.

Phishing, Phone/Email Scams

Modern life has afforded us unprecedented conveniences. But it is also opened the door to deceptive criminality schemes which frequent global headlines. Fraudsters can attack both off and online, hiding behind the façade of phony emails, letters, telephone calls, text messages and emails.

These crimes, known as ‘phishing’, pose an ominous modern world threat. They keep us on our toes, questioning what we see and hear. Is this person really calling from my bank? Could this email attachment be a virus? Will that link lead to a bogus website?

The big question: How can you be sure what is and isn’t a trusted source? Cyber criminals, usually out to steal personally identifiable information for the purpose of exploiting our wealth and identities, deserve our attention. It can take just a click to get snared.

So how can we stay clear of these shadowy, malicious forces? How can we stay one step ahead, ensuring we do not get duped into sharing our data and downloading viruses? For starters, since fraudsters are always producing new guises to lure victims, it is wise to keep up to date with frauds by following tech news reports.

• While there are nuances to each form of phishing, each usually shares common characteristics. It is imperative to remember that a bank – or any reputable organization – will never, ever ask for your login details (username, password) or any sensitive information, by email, text message or phone.
  If you are contacted with such a request, treat it as highly suspicious and end the call or disregard/delete the email/text message. The next thing to look out for is the ‘alarm-bell-ringing’ component, designed to frazzle your mind and encourage you to abandon your better judgement.
  A prime example of this would be being asked, upon receiving a call from your ‘bank’, to confirm your online logins in order to recover your ‘stolen’ savings. The goal of the caller is to create a situation of extreme urgency, forcing you to panic and become desperate to remedy the ‘situation’.

• Phishing frauds involving this ‘ticking clock’ could also come from a number of other (hoax) services, again urging you to act fast to save something highly valuable. For instance, an email might say your account will be deleted or your identity compromised if you do not comply.

• But what if you are unsure about, say, a call from your bank? Well, you could do worse than telling them you are busy and cannot talk. You could then directly contact your bank using a listed number on their official website. Now, convinced of the agent’s legitimacy, you can confirm whether there was ever an issue. This ‘reassuring practice’ can also be applied to dubious emails and texts.

• With phishing emails, vigilance is paramount. Let us suppose a goods service notifies you that a $200 order has been placed and that you need to click a ‘cancel’ link if you suspect an error. Naturally, you are suspicious, since you haven’t made any recent purchases.

• Fraud emails can be more deceptive, true, but there are proven ways to see through many ruses. Firstly, forget the technical and listen to your gut - is it telling you something is just off? Now pay closer attention to the email’s wording. How is the grammar, spelling, sentence structure? Does it ‘feel’ like a professional email from a trusted source? ‘Dear (Real Name)’ or just ‘Dear Customer’?

• Inspect the sender’s email address, noting anything odd. For example, while orders@onlineshopping.com sounds plausible enough, orders@onlineshopping12.com raises suspicion. You could also refer to old (trusted) emails from the goods company and compare sender address.

• In a different scenario, let us say you receive a work email that asks you to open a report from an attachment, but something feels awry. Since it is possible someone could have hacked your colleague’s email account, you’ve reason enough to tread with caution. To be safe, why not call your colleague to confirm the email was really from them?

• Disaster can usually be diverted by simply taking a step back and thinking before you respond to a potential phishing fraud. Finally, be sure to regularly monitor you bank accounts for suspicious activity, and ensure that you change your passwords, contact your bank, credit card companies and the authorities if you suspect you have become a victim of phishing.

• insurance is always on offer, making a credit monitoring service the more logical solution versus relying on a free annual credit report.

Credit Monitoring

In today's world, having control on your credit can help you to save both time and money. Not only can credit monitoring be a personal assistant to you, but also a watchdog. It watches your credit reports and will alert you with any changes to any of your accounts. This will both help you stay secure and maintain a healthy credit score.

Credit monitoring is extremely important when it comes to identity theft protection. Although credit monitoring is unable to completely prevent identity theft from happening, it can discover any suspicious activity early, which is essential.

Almost seventeen million consumers had their data compromised and experienced identity theft in 2017 alone. With your credit files, imposters can open credit cards, take out a car loan and open new bank accounts. Credit monitoring is used to identify potential cases of this and allows you to take control of it before a lot of damage is done.

Knowing your credit score is also extremely important in many aspects of your day-to-day life. This allows you to be aware of what is always going on. Your credit score can determine getting a loan, applying for a credit card, or even getting a job. Credit scores can fluctuate based on many different factors, which can often go unnoticed, leading people towards thinking they have a good credit score, when they potentially do not. 

Ensure to maximize your benefits if you have a credit monitoring service. Take full advantage of all the features the service will offer to you.

Access to your credit report, so you can check it consistently, as knowing yourself what is going on is the first step towards protecting your credit from criminals.

Access to your credit report, letting you see the number those lenders use to assess your credit worth. This will also allow to notice any potential identity theft, if you believe it is lower than it should be.

Alerts of any changes that are made to your credit file. Informing you of any accounts are opened in your name, information added to your report or even an inquiry into your credit files.