The rising tide of identity theft has been much in the news headlines as recently as countless identities have been stolen or compromised worldwide. This indicates hardly a week passes without hearing of the newest security breach involving personal identity information. With online security lapses in some of the largest corporations and even government agencies, a person might wonder when there is anything that can be carried out to beat identity theft. The answer is really a resounding "yes!" These 8 tips provide some excellent methods to minimize the possibility of becoming a prey of identity theft.

1) Use strong passwords

It's easy to rely on several trusted passwords for our accounts, but it is also an invitation to online disaster. It is essential that you use different passwords for every of your accounts. If you use one password for all your accounts, the danger is a cyber criminal can crack the password and then have usage of all your accounts. Conversely, having different passwords for every account helps it be much harder for identity thieves to get into your information. Even when one of the passwords is discovered, it will simply compromise that certain account, not all of them.

Make your passwords strong and difficult to guess using a combination of letters, numbers, and characters. There are many free password generators online; play one to generate very good passwords which is difficult to crack. If you take note of a copy of your password, be sure to keep it in a secure place like a locked file cabinet or safe. Another option is to use a password keeper like LastPass (my favorite) or Roboform, which could store all your free password manager and other personal information, and be locked by way of a master password.

2) Don't use sequential passwords.

Sequential passwords like password1, password2, password3 etc. may easily allow others to get into your accounts. Identity thieves know that many people are usually lazy when it comes to passwords, and use sequential passwords to keep things easy to remember. Once the cyber crooks determine one password, it won't bring them long to figure out the rest.

3) Change passwords regularly

Don't keep the same password for a great period of time. Change your passwords periodically, for example, once a month. By regularly changing passwords it becomes far more hard for someone to access your accounts.

4) Use credit cards for online purchases

There are always a handful of good reasons to use credit cards as opposed to debit cards for online purchases. First, credit cards are more secure because of the security system that bank card companies use. Secondly, when there is a dispute on a fraudulent charge, it's much simpler to dispute a demand that's not yet been paid than to recover funds already withdrawn and spent with a debit card.

5) Use only 1 card for online purchases

Attempt to use only 1 bank card for the online transactions, as this minimizes the odds of someone stealing your bank card information. Obviously using 5 cards increases the risk by 5 times over using only one card.

6) Check the internet site privacy policy

When you work having an online company, check its privacy policy. The privacy policy should explain in detail what information is collected and how it is used. If you disagree using their methods and use of information they gather from you, it's your prerogative never to work with this site.

7) When submitting any data, make sure the internet site is secure.

You can know the site is secure (that is, the info is encrypted) by looking at the beginning area of the URL. Sites without security encryption may have only the [http://] at the beginning. Secure sites may have an extra "s" on the end of the http, thus showing as [https://]. You may also see a padlock icon in the browser window which indicates SSL (Secure Socket Layer) mode. This means that any data sent to the internet site is encrypted (scrambled and encoded).

8) Update the Security Software for the PC

It is vitally important to keep your os and internet browser up to date with the newest security patches and updates. These updates often patch security holes and vulnerabilities discovered in the software. Failure to keep the body updated leaves you available to attack from hackers and other criminals who wish to get into your computer for private gain or even to harm it.

Make sure to keep your virus databases updated (you do have anti-virus installed don't you?), and install pop-up blockers that may block those annoying pop-up ads from websites that you may not desire to see in your browser