Identity theft is where a criminal gets personal information on someone and pretends to be that person so they can take out credit cards, bank accounts, loan agreements etc. in that person’s name.

Identity thieves generally don’t care about the age of their targets as long as they are over 18 (so they can buy alcohol etc. with the fake identity) but increasingly the over-60s age group are being targeted.

www.f-secure.com/gb-en/home/products/id-protection

F‑Secure ID PROTECTION alerts you if your personal information appears in a data breach and gives you expert advice on how to prevent a data breach from becoming identity theft. The APP also protects your identity by offering a secure password manager.

F-Secure say that with a combination of human intelligence and dark web monitoring, they will be the first to know if your personal information has been exposed in a data breach.

If a data breach occurs and your information is exposed, they provide expert advice for each individual type of personal information.

To register for the service, you have to pay and you give them your email address which is what they monitor. They watch for any data breaches and check if your email address or other details have been exposed.

A data breach is where hackers gain unauthorised access to an organisation’s information which can include their customer’s data i.e. possibly your personal information.

It costs £3.99 per month or £26.90 per year to monitor up to 5 email addresses for data breaches.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.