As the new semester starts for college students, a new batch of Freshmen get introduced not only to college life, but to identity theft.  College students are five times more likely to become victims of identity theft than the rest of the population and usually take longer to find out that they have been victimized.  Living in close quarters combined with a lack of proper precautions make college students easy pickings for identity thieves.

TIPS

Here are a list of things that college students should do to protect their identity: Lock their computers, smart phones and tablets when they are not in use;  use a strong password and use different passwords for each device; use encryption software on all their electronic devices; don’t use Wifi for financial transactions, it is too easy to be cracked; college mail boxes are not very secure, have sensitive mail sent to their home or sent to the student electronically; don’t trust messages with links from “friends” that appear on their Facebook page and don’t put too much personal information on their Facebook pages; it can lead to identity theft; shred papers with personal information before disposing of them; check their bank statement and credit card statements carefully each month to look for signs of identity theft and get their free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies annually.