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.

Identity theft is a crime in which an imposter obtains key pieces of personally identifiable information (PII), such as Social Security or driver's license numbers, to impersonate someone else.

The information can be used to obtain credit, merchandise, and services in the name of the victim, or to provide the thief with false credentials. In addition to running up debt, in rare cases, an imposter might provide false identification to police, creating a criminal record or leaving outstanding arrest warrants for the person whose identity has been stolen.  Identity theft is serious business.