Tuesday, April 28, 2015

What is a Password Vault

Monitoring for identity theft is something that many people take very seriously - but it is also something that few people truly understand the intricacies of. It's one thing to understand that in order to keep your information safe, you must take measures against thieves and strangers, and an entirely different thing altogether to know how to cover all bases. There are many different methods that can be used in order to better protect yourself from identity theft, as well as utilizing some common sense practices. Below, some of them are outlined in more detail, giving you an idea as to what you'll be working with after making the decision to protect your identity.

Password Management
This type of service can also be considered a password vault, because it is used to keep all of your passwords and account log in information in one place. With one main password, you'll be able to access an entire database of your information, making it possible to recover - and remember -  long lost and little used passwords and information. This service is extremely useful because it means that there will be no need to write down information, meaning that it can't "fall into" the wrong hands, potentially exposing your information to those that shouldn't have it. Password management is a relatively new trend, but it is useful to many different kinds of people with different volumes of passwords and information that needs to be stored.

Credit Monitors and Identity Monitoring Services
These services are much more in depth than password managers because they rely on user input in order to comprehensively look through and keep an eye on a person's information. They constantly scan through accounts, information, records and transactions, looking for things that are typically associated with prior cases of identity theft. When these are found, they are emailed back to users so that they can deal with things as needed - in order to full deal with identity theft, people must first know that it is happening... and these methods make this more than possible. Constantly working and focused on the areas that you feel need the most help, credit and identity monitors are a great way to help in stopping identity theft from getting out of hand and continuing without notice.

Common Sense Behavioral Changes
In terms of ease of use, these changes are much simpler (and less costly) to enact than the other methods. Common sense dictates that when people do not have access to information, they cannot misuse it. This means that in order to fully and best protect yourself from identity theft, you need to limit what you share and who you share it with. Don't post intimate details online, don't use sites that you don't trust... and definitely don't download or click on links from emails and websites unless you can be absolutely certain that they will not result in viruses, spam or someone that shouldn't have your information getting their hands on it. While it may take some time to get comfortable acting in this way, once you've adopted these changes, it will be easy to keep them as a part of your routine.

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