LifeLock Blog

Visa, one of the largest credit card companies, has been commended on a process called Tokenization. Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols that retain all the essential information without compromising its security. Visa has taken the steps to making their  Tokenization system very robust in conformance to best practices, and have been recognized for it.

Not every merchant uses such a robust system, which leaves their customers vulnerable to identity theft. When companies don’t follow best practices they leave it up to their customers to deal with the consequences for themselves. So I applaud Visa for taking the proactive steps to prevent a breach of their customers data in such a way.

Visa has had their fair share of theft attempts. Do you wonder why hackers don’t spend all their time trying to get access to main credit card companies servers? Because they have tried and have failed and companies like Visa keep their information encrypted using tokenization with the keys changing regularly. Visa has, in recent, fought off several attempts to gain access to their servers and were successful in doing so.

Unfortunately not all companies are so carful with your information. Every time you use your credit card it has to go through a credit card processing company who now also has your information. There are several companies that process credit cards, so your information is most likely stored in several of them. If those companies aren’t as secure it doesn’t matter how secure your information is on Visa’s servers. Your card information could still be stolen from those card processing companies, which has happened in recent.

The best way to discover and monitor your identity is to be proactive about it. The best company that allows you to do that is LifeLock. They by far offer the best tools and service that help you discover and remediate any identity theft. You could look after your own identity, but just looking at your credit report isn’t enough. You need the tools that LifeLock can provide to it’s members for a more complete analysis of your identity.

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I have written several articles on how to stay protected from identity theft while in college. I have written many talking about how you should keep your sensitive documents secure by using a safe and I have discussed keeping your computer safe using passwords and a laptop safe. It has come to my attention that perhaps a more in depth discussion of Internet and computer safety might be needed.

I don’t feel I went into as much detain as I could have when talking about computer safety. So this post is going to be all about how you can do simple things to prevent an identity theft at your school or College.

Physical Protection
Always know where your laptop is and make sure it’s secure at all times. This is where the laptop safe that I mentioned in an earlier post comes in handy. You can lockup your laptop and know no one is using it. Desktops can be secured to desks and other furniture to prevent theft. Don’t think they won’t take your desktop they, the thieves, will.

Your Computer
Make sure you always have a password for your account login. This will not protect against everyone, but will prevent casual encounters with your account. People who knows what they are doing can get around your account password but some protection is better than none. Also you can enable the screensaver login so that your computer will lock itself when the screensaver comes on.

Make sure you have anti-virus protection this will prevent you from getting malware that can steal your login information to any website you login to, including your bank account. Keep it up to date and update it often. Many people get their laptop and never subscribe to the definition updates. I know it cost money, but it’s worth it to keep your laptop safe.

Internet and Network Use
Be careful what you do on the school’s network. Many schools have large networks and there are many people on them. Be careful what files you are sharing on your computer. When placing orders over the Internet make sure they are encrypted so you don’t send your account information over the Internet. This also applies to any online accounts. Make sure before you login that the address includes the https: this means the site is encrypted and you should be relatively safe. Most web browsers will display a little locked padlock in the address bar to alert you when sites are encrypted and an unlocked padlock when they are not.

Be careful what information you put on your social networking sites. Even if you protect your information from strangers hackers have been known to hack into your friends accounts and harvest information from them and all their friends. Be careful never to provide information that would be part of a security question. Like what is your mother’s maiden name, or what is your pet’s name. All this kind of information is stuff people might put on a Facebook or MySpace profile. It might not be under the information section, but a picture with your mother or pet with the proper tags might just be the ticket to getting into an online bank account for the thief.

Mail accounts are a great place to obtain login information that would allow access to many things you don’t want people to see. Most web email providers encrypt their login and webmail applications. Be careful however when using a mail client like Outlook or Apple Mail that you setup the mail account to use a secure login. If you don’t, it won’t use an encrypted login and will sends your login information right over the network to be seen by everyone.

Peer to peer clients like Limewire are a lot of fun but getting your identity stolen because of them isn’t. Plus most of them are illegal anyways so just stay away from it all together. The question you might be asking is does that include torrents? Yes, don’t use torrents either; there have been recorded cases of hackers using torrents to steal information and identities.