Spear phishing scams are becoming all too common.  The scammers are getting smarter on fooling you and gaining your trust.  Giving personal information to the wrong person can be financially devastating to you.

We’re all at risk of identity fraud every day, but we can do things to limit that risk.  Most of us do things in our everyday life than unnecessarily expose ourselves to identity theft and fraud.  Below are the top 5 things we fail to do to protect ourselves from identity theft and fraud.

Information obtained in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)  lawsuit by the  Immigration Reform Law Institute indicated there were 39 million instances between 2012 and 2016 where the name given on W-2 tax forms did not match the name on the Social Security account.

As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, A group of “Call of Duty” players — including men from Dolton and Bloomington, Illinois are suspected of stealing more than $3 million in cryptocurrency in a computer-hacking scheme, according to a court filing unsealed in Chicago, IL.

The AP News Wire reported on October 4^th, it was revealed that more than 30,000 Pentagon workers’ personally identifiable information (PII), of both military and civilian personnel, including credit card numbers, had been compromised.  According to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, although no classified information was compromised, the breach could have happened some months ago but was only recently discovered.  “The department is continuing to assess the risk of harm and will ensure notifications are made to affected personnel,” said the DOD’s statement, adding that affected individuals will be informed in the coming days and fraud protection services will be provided to them.