Why you are your best defense against identity theft

We can educate, alert, protect, and even reimburse your employees when identity theft strikes. We can walk them through the remediation process, handle their paperwork, and monitor the progress of their claim. But your employees can maximize their protection — and minimize their need for recovery — when they act quickly and in concert with all the tools their PrivacyArmor benefit provides. 

In this article, we’ll look at several ways in which employees can take action, using PrivacyArmor’s tools and notifications, to strengthen their protection.

Fraud information

Our InfoArmor blog frequently addresses the topic of how identity thieves operate. This is so that you can understand and either share or teach back that information to your employees. When your employees are aware of how phishing works, for example, they’ll be less likely to fall victim to it. They might even recognize it outright and inform their managers and coworkers when they see a suspicious message.

The same goes for breaches and the dark web. Our blog has shared both what to do when a breach occurs and how personal data is bought and sold on the dark web. A better understanding of this relationship can persuade employees be more proactive in protecting their data at the first signs of a breach.

Awareness of other types of fraud, such as the creation of synthetic identities and how identity thieves can target games such as Fortnite can be learned and shared through our blog. Other relevant topics include how to protect your digital footprint and the privacy risks of facial recognition technology.

The more informed you and your employees are about the tactics of identity thieves and fraudsters, the more able you’ll be to defend against them.

Privacy settings and sharing data

One important way to protect yourself is to be aware of any privacy settings in each of your accounts and applications.

Knowing who can see your data, what data they can see, and what controls you might have over them is a good start. We can even share how you can set those privacy options to be as airtight as possible.

A good identity theft solution such as PrivacyArmor can take it a step further. For example, we can monitor your social media accounts for signs of hijacking or misuse. Some tools like this simply need to be activated by the employee, while others might need a small amount of configuration to be most effective. So while PrivacyArmor provides the tools to help keep them safe, making sure your employees are informed about them and how they can use them can help make them even safer.

It should also be noted that privacy settings are less effective when people fall prey to oversharing. For example, employees can block their profile’s phone number from being seen, but it won’t do any good if they post their numbers in publicly shared conversations. On the application side, blocking social profiles from view but then sharing all that data through online brokers such as Intelius and People Finder is probably not in their best interests. For this reason, we encourage people to opt out of these kinds of data brokering services if privacy is their main concern

As for keeping your account passwords safe, our first advice would be to create a secure password. PrivacyArmor employs a two-factor authentication feature that helps make employees’ account harder to hack. Enabling two-factor authentication on other accounts isn’t so difficult to set up, and provides yet another way employees can strengthen their own defenses.

Account notifications so they can take action quickly

One of the places where employees can make the most impact regarding identity theft is in their response to notifications. PrivacyArmor actively scans for many dangers, from failed login attempts to social media hijacking to the suspicious use of an IP address. 

The alerts presented to the employee when these dangers are detected can help them maximize their protection. By taking action quickly  — whether that means changing a password, freezing a compromised account, or closing an unnecessary one — you give hackers and identity thieves less time to do their damage. 

Notifications can come from other sources, too. Your bank might send an email encouraging a password change. Your antivirus might send a notification that your definitions are out of date. Your operating system might notify you that a driver needs updating.

Often, alerts such as these are direct responses to vulnerabilities and threats detected by the sender. Making sure your employees understand the importance of such notifications and how these situations can impact their data privacy might encourage them to take action quicker than they normally would.

Luckily, even If they do nothing, PrivacyArmor will still cover them throughout the remediation and recovery process. But employees who act on the notifications sent to help protect themselves are less likely to need those recovery services on the back end.

Breaches and dark web warnings

PrivacyArmor might also warn an employee when their personally identifiable information (PII) is involved in a breach at some other company. Or when our dark web investigators find their PII for sale on the dark web.

In cases like these, we do more than just inform them. We’ll help walk them (and you) through the process of protecting yourself after learning your data’s been compromised. By participating in this process, employees might be able to minimize their risks and reduce the chances of it happening again.

Identity theft protection plus YOU is the best defense

We like to think that our PrivacyArmor brand offers your employees the best defense against identity theft. With PrivacyArmor, they’ll get all the tools and information they need to minimize the risks of identity theft, along with our best-in-class recovery and reimbursement protections should it ever occur.

However, when you and your employees actively engage in protecting yourselves along with fully using PrivacyArmor’s features, your defenses will be even stronger.