How to Prevent Identity Theft When Banking Online

Nov 06, 2025  Jortty

Each year, several individuals reportedly become victims of identity theft. The crime typically occurs whenever someone nabs your personal or financial information without your permission and uses it to make purchases or open accounts under your name. Luckily, there are a few steps we can help you take at Jortty to avoid identity theft and better safeguard yourself from common tech issues.

Tips To Prevent Identity Theft With Online Banking

Here are a couple of quick tech fixes we can help you with to safeguard yourself online.

Password-Protect Your Devices

Typically, there are a few number of smartphone users who mentions that they never use any security feature to unlock their phone like a passcode, facial recognition, or fingerprint. If you are part of this section, then you should reconsider your security measures. When you fail to safeguard your smartphone, tablet, or any other electronic device, it always poses a threat to your financial and personal data. It is the data that would include the banking information and passwords.

Use a Password Manager

It is often found that adults are often reusing passwords for varied online accounts. They use the same password for electronic devices as other financial accounts, placing your data at greater risk. Typically, it would take guessing just one password for the scammer to access some or all of the accounts. For tracking whatever, there should be a distinctive password for each online account while you try to use a password manager. These password managers allow you to securely store the passwords without recalling the other login credentials.

Never Carry Your Social Security Card

Social Security number comes in nine digits, which opens the door to identity theft if, in any case, they fall into the wrong hands. To avoid theft, you can keep your Social Security card in a safe place in your home instead of stashing it in your wallet. If your card gets stolen, then an identity thief would often impose some severe damage, like using an SSN to apply for credit under your name.

Protect Your Documents

Paper documents are extremely important and would allow a scammer to steal valuable financial or personal data. Never make it easier for them to access these paper documents. Here are a couple of tech problem solutions to use while protecting your documents:

• Always ensure that you shred documents containing your financial or personal data or both. These would include banking statements, credit card statements, and even bills.

• Never allow mail to pile up in your mailbox. Mailboxes are frequent targets for scammers. If you ever head out of town, place a hold on mail deliveries while you are away or ask your trusted neighbor to fetch your mail.

• Always ensure to sign up for electronic statements from financial companies. It is the way you will not get sensitive paper documents from credit card firms, banks, and other firms that attract scammers.

Watch Out for Phishing Attempts

During a phishing attempt, a cyber thief often scours for financial or personal data that can help them steal your identity. Phishing attempts generally come in several forms, such as text messages or emails. The main goal is to make you click on a link or open any attachment that appears legitimate.

Never Give Out Personal Information Over the Phone

The scammers are often creative and sneaky. For instance, they would often call you pretending to be an employee of a credit card company or a bank. In this conversation they would ask for your personal data, credit card PIN, Social Security Number, or mother’s maiden name. No reputed companies will ever contact you by phone requesting personal data. Therefore, before you give out your data, it would lead to identity theft. Ask for the caller’s name and the organization they are representing.

How to Recognize Signs of Identity Theft

Here are a couple of signs that will help you identify the victim of identity theft that includes:

• You will get bills for the things you never bought
• You will get calls from debt collectors about accounts that you never authorized
• You will find information on your credit report for accounts you did not authorize
• You denied the credit applications
• You can notice missing mail from your mailbox, or it stops getting delivered.

What to Do if You’re a Victim of Identity Theft

If you ever find yourself getting victimized or a potential victim of identity theft, then these are the moves you should make:

• You can place a free fraud alert on your credit report.
• File for a report with the local law enforcement agencies
• Keep your credit reports to monitor detecting suspicious activity
• Connect to firms such as credit card issuers and banks who stay responsible for accounts you suspect of any danger.
• You may have to cancel the accounts involved in cases of identity theft,
• Dispute the transactions you consider a scam.

The Bottom Line

Identity theft often triggers various financial problems. However, you can safeguard yourself from becoming victimized by identity theft by taking the appropriate approach, like protecting your financial or personal data, while regularly reviewing your credit reports. For more information about identifying scams and how you can protect yourself, at Jortty, we will help you with everything!