Six Spooky Threats to Your Privacy and Identity

The online world can be a scary place, but you've got ways to protect yourself

Navigating today’s digital world can sometimes feel like wandering the darkened hallways of a haunted house. Potential threats lurk in the shadows: creeps who want to steal your identity, scammers who want to trick you out of your money, companies that want to profit off your personal information.

If you take the proper precautions, however, you can help keep your identity and privacy protected this Halloween season and year-round. Here are six of the most common digital dangers to watch for, along with powerful tools and services you can use to keep these creepy-crawlies at bay.

Dastardly dark web denizens

If your personal information is stolen as part of a data breach, it often lands on the dark web—an anonymous realm where cybercriminals operate via illicit websites, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. Here, these bad actors can purchase breached data and use it to commit identity theft or fraud. You can help foil them by using IDX’s CyberScan tool. It continuously monitors the entire web, including the murky corners of the dark web, to see if your personal information is being traded or sold. You’ll be notified immediately if your data appears to be compromised, so you can take early action to protect against the frights of identity fraud.

Tricky tracking cookies

Many websites use tracking cookies to collect your personal data. Like ghosts that keep following you, these cookies actually continue to monitor your activity after you’ve left the website and started browsing elsewhere on the web. The information collected by these cookies can be sold to third parties; cybercriminals have also been known to use them for the purpose of stealing your identity or installing malware. You can help defeat these "ghost" cookies by using IDX Tracking Blocker. This proactive tool scans websites for tracking cookies and prevents them from activating, drastically limiting their ability to collect your data.

Icky identity thieves

An identity thief is someone who uses your personal information (for example, your name, Social Security number, address, credit card, financial accounts, or medical accounts) as their own, without your consent. The thief could commit crimes in your name, or make purchases, loans, or other transactions for which you could be held financially responsible. You can help protect yourself by activating Credit Management Services from IDX. You’ll get 24/7 monitoring of your credit report and credit score, and you’ll receive an alert any time there’s new financial activity in your name. This means you can act quickly if anything seems suspicious—and minimize any damage done by a villain who’s targeted you.

Horrid hackers

Just as madmen in horror films break open doors with axes, online fraudsters have their own way of breaking into people’s accounts: by hacking their passwords. In fact, this method is one of the leading causes of data breaches and identity theft. Making your passwords unique and difficult to guess is one of the most important things you can do to boost your security. But who wants to remember dozens or even hundreds of passwords? Instead, you can use IDX Password Manager. It generates random, hard-to-hack passwords for each of your accounts and stores them in a vault-like encrypted space. To access your accounts, all you have to do is log into Password Manager using a single strong password.

Scary social media scammers

Scammers are the vampires of social media—draining the lifeblood out of your experiences on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They might try to hack into your account. They might come after you with fake ads or fraudulent or inappropriate messages, in order to steal your money, reputation, or personal information. You can help ward off these fiends by using IDX SocialSentry, which proactively monitors your accounts and notifies you if it detects account takeovers, suspicious activity, inappropriate content, or other harmful actions.

Diabolical data brokers

So-called data broker sites scour the web collecting bits of your private information, such as your age, address, phone number, tax records, and court records. Then, like Dr. Frankenstein, they assemble the data into a monster-size profile of you and sell it, legally, to advertisers and other groups. You have no control over who buys your profile; your data could even fall into the hands of cyberthieves. It’s critical to get your profile removed from these sites, but it’s tedious and time-consuming to do manually. IDX’s ForgetMe tool does the job for you, automatically requesting removal of your profile from more than 100 major data brokers. It continuously monitors these sites and keeps repeating the process if your profile reappears.

From data removal to password protection, IDX’s advanced tools and services are designed to safeguard you and your family against the ghouls and goblins of the digital world. And the best news is, they’re all bundled together in a single place: IDX’s Complete Plan of privacy and identity coverage. The plan features a comprehensive list of protections—all the ones described above plus many others—against current and emerging cyberthreats. You’ll have greater peace of mind, so you can focus on carving pumpkins, dressing up in costume, and enjoying the other fun parts of this season.