Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Highlights a Growing Problem: College Identity Theft provides an education in prevention, a leading provider of online public records and people search, hopes to raise awareness of a new and rapidly growing form of identity theft that targets college students.  Today, in addition to worrying about managing their studies and extracurricular activities, students have a new concern – protecting their identity., hence becomes perfect to enhance personal security and safety via people find, background checks, and more.

According to a recent report from Los Angeles Times’ column Scam Watch, it’s not always strangers who commit identity theft, sometimes it’s a new roommate.  Identity theft doesn’t just adversely affect a victim’s finances; it has the propensity to be devastating to an individual’s reputation and good name. It occurs when an individual’s personally identifying information, like a social security number, birth certificate, or driver’s license number, is used by someone else to establish credit card accounts, apply for employment, set up utility accounts, or other fraudulent activity. The unpermitted use of the victim’s existing accounts to purchase services or goods is also considered to be identity theft.  Once the accounts have been set up, the debt or undesirable activity is pinned on the unsuspecting victim.

The consequences of identity theft can be devastating. In addition to debt, some victims may be turned down for a job, loans, and have their credit rating damaged to the point where it can take years to repair and restore. Sometimes the damage can be irreparable.

Its growing prevalence in colleges and universities can be attributed to students’ overall lack of awareness, phlegmatic attitude towards protecting personal documents and information, and sharing close living spaces with peers.  The ease in which an individual’s identity can be stolen or compromised depends largely upon how vigilant they are about protecting their personal information. offers the following tips to help college students protect themselves from identity theft:
•    Buy a shredder and shred documents like unwanted credit card offers, bank or credit card statements, or any other sensitive information.  Simply throwing it away gives identity thieves a chance to do something with personal information.
•    Often colleges and universities require the use of social security numbers to login to their websites, register for classes, and use other administrative services.  Students should commit the number to memory or keep it in a secure place to avoid it being stolen.
•    Make sure accounts, computers, and phones are password protected if they contain sensitive information so they cannot be accessed by anyone who is not the owner.
•    If using a public or shared computer, always log out of secure sites including online banking, email, and social networking sites. Verify that the web browser does not save login information.
•    Be diligent when reviewing bank and credit card charges on statements.  If a discrepancy appears, report it immediately to the financial institution that is associated with the account.
•    Often, new students are put assigned living quarters with complete strangers. Use to find out more about the new people that could potentially access sensitive information. looks for information through white pages, government and public records, and social networking sites. Reports can have different kind of data ranging from images, ages, and address history, phone number. Users can also run a background check that will search criminal records, civil judgments, and more. can alert students to potential problems before they affect them adversely.


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  1. Keep your sensitive information protected. Shredding services los angeles has to be regularly done by companies to get rid of physical access to data.

  2. Identity theft right now is a widespread problem all throughout the nation. The only way to solve this is to keep your documents properly shredded before disposing it. I personally ask for help in document shredding new jersey in doing this task for me.