However, in a new twist of events, consumers are no longer the only people affected by identity thieves, as businesses have now become prone to the development in the criminal enterprise of business identity theft with quite a number of businesses losing a lot of revenue in the process. What usually happen is that, a criminal will hijack the identity of a particular business and use it to establish a string of credit with banks and other lenders.
This in turn leads to a damage that can be very devastating to the victim’s business. A business could risk having a spoilt credit history therefore raising the chances of being denied credit, a move that will definitely paralyze your operations. Anyone looking to protect their businesses from identity thieves should ensure they have good privacy protection system.
After a number of businesses reported huge losses due to this, many business owners have turned to seeking help on how to keep their businesses safe from the business identity thieves. Some effective guides have been put in place to ensure consumers and the businesses are thoroughly combating the menace to avoid and reduce the threats businesses face from identity theft. Below are ways which businesses use to prevent identity theft.
Protecting Business Records and Data.
As much as business identity theft is a high-tech crime that affects those shopping, communicating and doing business online, most business identity thefts takes place offline. Some of the common tactics used by these frauds includes stealing wallets and ladies’ purses, interrupting or rerouting mail and going through garbage so as to obtain sensitive information.
To counter this and ensure privacy protection, most businesses today maintain records that are important to run their operations and totally shredding all the unnecessary documents or records. However, while doing this it is advisable to put any document that you must keep in a very secure location. This guarantees businesses their privacy protection and ensures smooth running free from identity thieves.
Protecting Their Businesses Online.
Technology has eased life with the introduction of a couple of online services that makes our lives much easier and better. Many people do a lot of their transactions online today. However, caution is advised for businesses which strive to secure their identities. Most of them have resorted to not sharing their financial documents, sensitive personal information or account numbers via platforms like e-mails or any other web-based services.
This has proved to be helpful for many business owners as their financial privacy protection is sorted, therefore running smoothly without having to worry about business identity thieves.
Monitoring Activity.
Actually, this goes without saying, anything that you do not keep your eye on, will definitely face some external disturbance. Therefore, the best method to detect possible identity theft is to be aware and monitor activities around your business. Most businesses do this by monitoring their credit reports more often. Some businesses have gone a step further and registered, rather signed up for credit monitoring service. Among ways to ensure your privacy protection, this is among the most effective.
Protecting Customers.
When thinking about protecting yourself from identity theft, a business should also consider doing the same for the personal and sensitive information of its clients. By protecting their customers, businesses today have experienced less identity theft because, by protecting their customer’s privacy, it keeps them safe as there are no loopholes. Customers can at times be the targets of the identity theft putting both them and the business at risk.
Watching out For Phishing Scams.
Many people have fallen prey to scams and lost quite a lot of money to fraudsters who trick people into divulging their confidential personal and business account information e.g. account number, passwords and user names. Businesses have therefore become alert on such and are avoiding any persuasions to click or open up any attachment in emails as doing so could connect them to fraudulent websites or causing a spyware to be installed in their computer therefore putting their privacy protection at risk.
Subscription to Email Alerts.
There are many genuine online platforms that offer free email alert services that can notify one when business registration information has been changed or updated. Many businesses have embraced the idea and have enrolled for such services because it provides them with early warnings of potential fraud. Using email alert has improved business operations since business owners are notified of any fishy transactions on the go and can therefore quickly act on them, saving their business great deal of money and reputation.
Filling Annual Reports and Renewals on Time.
On top of the administrative risk of dissolution of a business for failure to file, business identity thieves are on the lookout for businesses that are classified as suspended, inactive or in default. These crooks believe that if a business fails to keep up with normal annual business filling, then they will not realize when information has been changed until it is too late. Businesses are countering this by ensuring they file their returns well in advance to ensure their privacy protection.
Many businesses have counted major losses following attacks by business identity thieves who give them sleepless nights. In a bit to recover from the losses, most of them hike prices so as to cover for the cost of ensuring smooth operations, in terms of both the business and consumer’s privacy protection. This has led to incessant cases of hiking that has instead turned consumers into victims of high product prices. The cost of business identity theft costs businesses across the world an estimated $221 billion in a year therefore becoming the newest threat to both small and big businesses around the globe. However, following the few ways we have listed above, business owners are able to dramatically reduce the chances of experiencing business identity theft.