Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: Whether you’re shopping online or in-store this holiday shopping season, protecting your personally identifiable information can help prevent identity theft.

Rick Simpson: Be vigilant in protecting yourself and monitoring your own credit to know if someone is actually taking advantage or exploiting your information.

Halpern: That was FBI Supervisory Special Agent and Identity Theft Program Manager Rick Simpson.

He says consumers can proactively reduce their risk of becoming victims in several ways. One option is to use a monitoring service, which sends alerts when credit is obtained.

Simpson: As a consumer, it’s very important to know as soon as your information, your Social Security number, is being exploited. The sooner you know, the sooner you can take actions to reverse what’s being done.  

Halpern: Another option is to freeze your credit until you want to use it.

Simpson: If you, as a consumer, know that you’re not going to apply for any credit over the next year, you can go to the credit agencies and freeze your credit so that no one can obtain credit, and that is sometimes the safest play.

Halpern: If you do become a victim through online means, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

With FBI, This Week, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.