A little while ago I got an email about an ambassador opportunity for a child ID theft program. Normally this isn’t the sort of thing that would catch my attention because I’m notoriously unconcerned with privacy. Which is exactly why I thought it might be good for me to participate and learn more about some of these issues.
I’m one of those people who really doesn’t care if my personal information is out there. You want to know how old I am? I’ll tell you. If my health information gets out? Meh. I wouldn’t send it out over the wire but the idea of it being somehow accidentally released is not something that sends me into a heart-stopping panic. (At least not these days. After all, there’s more personal information about me and my health on this blog than pretty much anything you’ll find in my medical file.) And I don’t especially care if some company somewhere knows where I shop and what I buy. (Dear Facebook, I’m good at ignoring ads. Love, me.)
It’s different with other things, of course. I do make an effort to be stealth about entering my PIN at the ATM or when using my bank card at a store, though admittedly I don’t go so far as to be that paranoid-looking person who cups the machine with her hand and has to squint through her fingers to punch in her code. And we did an extraordinary amount of shredding when we were getting ready to move. It was kind of satisfying going through really old bills and bank statements from when I had no money and putting them month by month through the shredder. Plus shredded paper makes good packing material. (Related: I’m taking bets on how many years we’ll live in this house before we stop finding tiny pieces of shredded paper in corners.)
My husband is a little more anal careful about stuff like this. A few years ago he started insisting on shredding those credit card applications that come in the mail, indicating you’re pre-approved for some outrageous amount and with your personal information already filled out. He was less concerned about the personal info, I think, and more with the fact that otherwise someone could theoretically grab it from the recycling, change the address and submit the application in order to get a credit card in our name. Does that actually happen? I guess it probably does.
So he’s training me and I, in turn, am trying to be more smart about this stuff. After years of using the same password for everything I now have a different password for every site I use. As a result, most of my brain power is now taken up with remembering passwords to social networking and shopping accounts, which probably explains my lack of accomplishment in other areas.
I remember several years ago my dad declared that he was not signing up for anything else that required a password. He had his bank PIN, email password and a couple of other things I can no longer remember, and that was going to be it, he said. Yeah right. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of passwords and secret words and special images I have to log into things now. But just thinking about how much of ourselves we put out there certainly drives home the point that it could potentially be very easy for someone to get personal and financial information and have a party.
I’m just at the beginning stage of learning what IDENTITY GUARD® is all about. The gist is that this service protects you from identity theft with really robust technology that can alert you to certain kinds of activity involving your personal information. I can’t even imagine how complicated that must be, but it sounds fascinating.
The other reason I was interested in learning about this service is that they have a program called kID Sure℠, a really comprehensive child ID theft protection service. Reading the info I realized it hadn’t really occurred to me to keep Connor’s information secure. Not that I’m posting it all over the internet, but I hadn’t actually thought too much about whether it was okay to provide his social insurance number on a form. I don’t know why I hadn’t, because I am actually careful about who I give mine out to. If they really don’t need it, they don’t get it. Why should it be any different for my toddler?
In any case, I’ll be doing a few posts about this over the next few months and I expect it to be quite an eye opener. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your stories about privacy and how (if) you protect your personal information. Scare me straight, if you will.
Image credit: iStock, via Identity Guard
Note: This service was provided to me for review at no charge (except because I’m Canadian I can’t actually access it, so I’m participating as an onlooker). In addition I received monetary compensation. All opinions are my own.
