By now, you probably have New Year resolutions for 2012 and plan to accomplish a few things including getting organized. Being organized and disciplined is one of the best ways to not only make a plan become reality but also a systematic approach for getting your identity in order.

Many people are very disorganized when it comes to their personal and confidential information. Being organized means collecting your mails from the mailbox frequently, following a plan to keep some documents and securely discard others, storing selected documents in a safe place, monitoring your identity regularly including bank accounts, credit reports and other financial or non-financial accounts, being selective when it comes to applying for credit cards or creating online accounts and sharing information. Being disciplined is being organized consistently and following a plan which might also include selecting unique and strong passwords and changing them frequently so that if they have become compromised, they also become useless.

You may be wondering where to start. For a starter, take a look at your life and decide where your weaknesses may lie when it comes to your personal information and getting your identity in order. Think about how you organize and protect your documents or which passwords you might have shared with others. Once you identify where you might need a slight Identity Diet, create a plan to remedy your situation and follow the plan.

Getting your identity in order is not a one time effort but rather a consistent and ongoing task which might take some time initially and some more time thereafter, however, the benefit of not having to deal with identity theft which might include a takeover of your existing accounts such as credit cards or online accounts by someone who emails to all your contacts pretending to be you, or a new account opened under your name may be well worth the effort of getting your identity in order before identity theft happens.

That being said, I’m not suggesting that by being organized, identity theft will not happen, however, I am suggesting that the risk of identity theft will be much lower because its rate of occurrence will diminish and when it happens, you will be quick to respond by knowing what information is compromised and who to contact.

Until next time, be identity safe,
Henry Bagdasarian
Identity Management Institute

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