Tips to Protect Your Identity
Our personal information and identity is very important for our well-being and livelihood. There are always new ways of stealing a person’s identity being created every day. How can you keep up and keep you and your loved ones’ information and identity safe?
Knowing who will and won’t call you.
Medicare, Social security, and the IRS will never call you. These are government entities, and they use the USPS to mail letters. The only time a government entity will contact you via telephone is when the call is pre-arranged by you!
Knowing this can be what saves you from accidentally giving out your information to someone malicious while thinking it’s Medicare, Social Security, or the IRS.
What are some other things to look out for?
Scammers will play the role given best they can in order to confuse you and obtain your information. Some things they may pretend to do include:
Saying they know your agent(s)
Saying they work with your agent(s)
Saying they work at the same address as your local agent(s)
Saying they have permission to call when you never authorized a phone call.
Saying they are Medicare, Social security, or the IRS
Saying they are the Insurance company
Caller ID spoofing and making it appear that the call is from your area, state, country, or a major city.
To verify information, hang up the call and:
Call your local agent directly.
Call the entity they claim to be through a verified phone number, not through the number that called you.
What are some important take-aways?
There are lots of individuals out there wrongfully looking to get your information for their own benefit. Remember who will and will not call you. If you received an unauthorized call or if something seems off, hang up and call your trusted local agent or the entity the caller claims to be through their verified phone number.
Again, Medicare, Social security, and the IRS will never call you. These are government entities, and they use the USPS to mail letters. The only time a government entity will contact you via telephone is when the call is pre-arranged by you!
