4 Steps You need to take if you are a victim of Data Theft

Are you a victim of Data Theft? Has some hacker stolen your online banking credentials and your debit card/credit card details? Did someone dupe you over a scam phone call into revealing your two-factor authentication code? Data theft has now emerged as crime that is finding many criminals as takers and on a daily basis thousands of people are duped world wide. Well, if you have been duped you need to make sure you take the following steps immediately to prevent any financial loss:

1. Contact Your Bank, Insurance & Health service provider

You should immediately contact them and ask them to temporarily freeze your assets. Alternatively you can ask them to assist you in changing the credentials or further securing your data. Also once you update them about the incident, they will go through your banking, insurance and medical history to look out for any suspicious or fraudulent transactions. Although it might seem cumbersome but its a good habit if you keep an offline record of your transactions.



2. Review your Credit Report

You should review your credit and financial reports periodically so that you are in sync with it. There are firms like Experian, TransUnion and Equifax that allow victims of fraud and identity theft to place a temporary security freeze on their account to prevent any financial losses. Further, the lenders will come to know and exhibit extra precaution before they lend in your name. If you file a police report then you can place a freeze on your credit account for a greater period of time.



3. Change your passwords on all accounts

Make sure you change your all passwords and keep no two passwords similar. You can use online password generator to make strong passwords that cannot be guessed easily and are not related to your stolen passwords in any sense. You can also use password manager for easy remembrance of all passwords. Infact you just need to remember only one password and that too for only your password manager.

4. Check your financial statements

You should check your financial statements by yourself and make sure that no unauthorized transactions have taken place. No one can keep a better eye on your transactions than you. You can also take help of experts to keep a tab on future transactions. If you are a victim of data theft then companies are required to cover credit monitoring services for about one to three years of time period. You should opt for these services and the experts would keep looking out for any suspicious activity on your account. In case they find one they shall immediately alert you.

