Fall Cleaning –  Avoiding Holiday Identity Theft

You’re on the lookout for phishing emails, you’ve set up two-step authentication for your accounts, and you’re using unique passwords that could not be guessed in a million years. You’re one of the most conscious and safe internet participants that you know. With information breaches always on the rise and hackers always looking for new ways to steal information, what else can you do to protect yourself from identity theft? It’s time to consider fall digital cleaning!

Fall Digital Cleaning – Below is a list of items for you to consider cleaning that could potentially hold valuable information which could lead to identity theft.

Old email accounts: Remember your first email account? Chances are you still have this, but it’s grown dormant as you no longer use the cool email you created at the mature age of 16 (we don’t judge.) It’s time to forgive and forget and by forget, we mean shut down. Here are some steps to follow for deleting old email accounts from your life.

Abandoned thumb drives: Great for saving files and images and easy transfer of information but like chapsticks, you have a surprising amount of half-used ones in the bottoms of various drawers. Do a quick inventory and consolidate what you need onto one thumb drive.  Consider what is putting you at risk and delete any information, images, and files that you no longer need.

Download folders: Although the simple download seems like magic, it is not. Those files can not only live on your computer and slow them down, but they also put you at risk for identify theft (because you downloaded your tax form to e-sign on your lunch break one day and forgot to delete it). Go through and delete sensitive information or hey, add it to that ONE thumb drive you’ve already consolidated from above.

Old hard drives: Like a picture of your ex, keeping your old hard drive is a waste of time. Save any information you need and have your hard drive securely destroyed by a professional service like PROSHRED® Charlotte’s hard drive destruction service. (please don’t go all “Office Space” and hit it with a bat in a field.)

Using a professional service such as PROSHRED® can help provide piece of mind, mitigate risk, and secure your information to prevent identity theft during one of the year’s most vulnerable season’s, the holiday season.

PROSHRED^® Charlotte is dedicated to best practices for keeping your information secure. Review our full list of services to see how we can help you today.