Protecting Your Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Your personally identifiable information, or PII, is any information that can be used to uniquely point to who you are. Some examples of PII are your Social Security Number, driver’s license number, and credit card number. Keeping your PII safe is important for many reasons, one of which is keeping your identity secure. If your PII is compromised, scammers can use it to gain even more PII. If that happens, they can assume your identity to make purchases or exploit your bank account.
The first step in keeping your PII secure is to verify that people are who they say they are. If you get a call from someone claiming to be from your bank, for example, don’t hand over your PII without asking any questions. Instead, ask the caller to verify your other information, and have them give you a phone number where they can be reached. If they are hesitant to do either of those things, there’s a good chance you are dealing with a scammer.
Unfortunately, you can’t always trust your caller ID, either: Scammers can “spoof” a company’s phone number, meaning that when a scammer calls, the actual company name will show up. So, be sure to ask them verifying questions!
You can take additional measures to secure your PII, such as shredding documents with sensitive information, mailing important documents from the post office instead of putting them in the mailbox, doing your online banking from a privately used computer, and leaving your Social Security card in a secure spot in your home.