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As I travel one of the things that is constantly in the back of my mind is keeping track of my wallet. On a recent trip I misplaced it for a few minutes and got me thinking about what I would do if I really lost it or it was stolen. Luckily it wasn’t So I decided to make a list of everything in my wallet so if I lost it the information would be readily available to report my cards missing, etc.

To do this I created a word document with different sections:
Drivers License - I noted down my DL number.
Credit Cards - I noted down the account number, type and the number to call if lost or stolen (Usually on the back of the card).
Insurance Cards - Noted down the policy numbers and customer service number.
Other Valuables - Things like my key card for work, goofy middle school picture of my wife, etc.

Now if I loose my wallet, I can call through the list in a matter of no time to notify all the banks, etc. This only took me about 30 to 45 minutes to do both mine and my wifes.

Now if you are primarily a laptop user, I wouldn’t recommend saving this doc to your hard drive. If you laptop gets stolen you are then potentially exposed. Even if you are a desktop user, especially if connected to the Internet, you might think about putting this on some time of external media for safer keeping, after all this file does have your credit card numbers in it. I had an old flash drive sitting around collecting dust, so I used that. I can unplug it when I’m done to secure the information a little better.

I found these identity theft stats through a side track in another area of research, I thought they were interesting:

In 2007 the FTC logged around 800,000 identity theft cases, of these:
- 32% Involved Identity Theft
- 68% Involved other types of Identity Fraud

Of these 800,000 cases, 23% involved a credit card account. But cases where new unapproved accounts were opened outnumbered abuse of existing accounts by two to one.

Other popular ways that thieves are using other people’s identities:
- Opening utility accounts (18%)
- For employment (14%)
- Government benefits fraud (11%)
- Loan fraud (5%)
- Other forms of bank fraud (13%)

In addition to protecting your credit report there are some other ways that identity thieves can use your identity. For instance if someone got a hold of your social security number, they could use it to get a job, etc. The social security administration sends out automatic statements each year. The statement includes a record of your yearly earnings, so you can quickly review this and make sure it checks out.

According to the website, this is supposed to be automatic, but I think I remember getting maybe one of these in my life. If this is the case with you, it would probably be good to request a statement. You can request a social security statement here. Maybe after you request one once, and they get the right address for you, you might start getting it more regularly.

Time for the third step in my series on protecting your credit. If you want to see them all visit my identity theft category.

Step 3: Monitor your credit report.
One of the other great ways to protect yourself again identity theft is to monitor your credit report. There are services that you can signup for to do this. Some of them include other things like security alerts, access to your credit score, etc. However, there is also a free option.

The three credit reporting agencies are required by law to supply you with one free copy of your credit report each year (not necessarily your score, they make you pay for this). Simply visit http://www.annualcreditreport.com to claim it.

Important Time Saving Rant:
BTW, don’t be tricked by sites like freecreditreport.com, who try and make you think you are getting your “free credit report”, but are really signing you up for their “credit monitoring” service “Free Trial” which will automatically bill your card. If you are asked for billing information/credit card anywhere along the way, you are on the wrong site! Even though the site has no prices on it (at least I couldn’t find them, and I looked pretty hard), you will find your credit card charged unless you call to cancel. Freecreditreport.com is run by Experian, one of the three credit reporting agencies, that is legally required to give you a free report once a year. I have to admit, I saw the ads on TV and was duped at first, I cancelled and so far haven’t seen a charge. But don’t make the same mistake, it is a pain to call and cancel. I think this is a terrible way to conduct business!
End Rant

You will be asked to enter some person information and then you will be presented with a set of three checkboxes for which agency you want to pull your report from. I recommend only pulling from one agency, and pulling your report three times a year (again Outlook re-occurring tasks are great for this). Basically the reports are going to all be very similar, so you won’t gain much by pulling them all at one time.

Once you have selected an agency to get your report from, you will be redirected through to your report. PRINT A COPY. The agency is only obligated to provide it to you, not to store it so you can come back and look at it anytime you want. Then just review the report in detail, making sure you recognize all the accounts and such. If you see something that doesn’t click, dig into it right away.

I think the three steps I have outlined so far are some good basic steps you can take to help protect your identity. If you have any other ideas, submit a comment, or send me an email I would love to hear your ideas.

Time spent on this step: 30 minutes.
Time spent so far: 1 Hour, 15 minutes.

I have been saying that the next generation won’t use a desktop computer, or even a laptop, but a phone.

I watching the live blog of the iPhone SDK Media even. I think the next generation of computing just happened.

Here is a video we put together recently:

The year was 1999, I was a know-it-all college kid who started a dialup ISP business. Along with that came the infrastructure necessary to host websites. Immediately on the heals of that came requests from friends and family to host their websites for little or no money. One of these was Ron Davis. Ron is what I call a domain-name collector, and over the years I obliged his addiction by hosting several of his domains. Of course I also did this for myself, imroot.com has also enjoyed a free ride for many years.

Now the year is 2008 and I am starting to realize how much I don’t know. We now have cable modems and DSL, and very few people use dialup anymroe. So recently the company decided it was finally time to terminate that side of our business to focus on Safe Eyes and EtherShield. However, I would have to find a new place to host my website.

That is when Ron stepped up and offered me space on a server he is operating, just because he is a nice guy (I think that is why anyway). Not only did he host it for me, he went as far as to move my entire wordpress database over to his server. I didn’t have to lift a finger. Thanks again man!

The only thing left to do was find a new mail host because Ron doesn’t have a mail server. We briefly contemplated putting one together to host our own stuff on, but after I looked into Google apps, I decided it wasn’t worth it. In a few minutes you can set it up, get 6GB of mail storage space per account and IMAP and web (same as gmail) access. Then just point your MX record at them, and the rest is magic.

I have to say, I am very happy with this new setup which actually does feel like an “upgrade” from my previous setup.