As you might unfortunately already be aware of, identity fraud is far more prevalent than it should be. It’s far more prevalent than many people realize as well – at least, until it happens to them. All within the year of 2017 on its own, as many as 16.7 million people fell victim to various forms of identity fraud, and that was all just inside of the United States, let alone anywhere else in the world.

There are many ways in which identity fraud can occur. For one thing, you can become a victim to identity fraud through your use of the internet, something that more and more people are growing aware of (and wary of) as internet use continues to increase and become more accessible than ever before. In fact, up to half of all people who use the internet will refrain from certain activities on it in order to protect their privacy and out of fear of identity fraud, according to data that was gathered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the year of 2018.

Taking care with the information you give out online is critical and can certainly be a great preventative step to take when reducing your chances of becoming a victim to identity fraud. Password protecting everything containing critical and personal information with strong passwords, ones that are hard to crack, is essential for protecting your identity. Not giving out your identity unnecessarily is another important step, and one that everyone should know about when it comes to internet safety.

Being safe online, while certainly important, is not the only measures you must take in order to prevent identity theft. Though most people don’t realize this, the majority of all identity theft actually occurs as a result of improperly disposed of paper documents. Unfortunately, up to 30% of all people actually do not shred their important documents before disposing of them, even if these documents contain critical and crucial information that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. It’s no surprise then that identity theft is still quite prevalent as a result of these improperly disposed of paper documents.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to easily preventing this from happening to you. For one, invest in an industrial shredder machine. An industrial shredder machine can be ideal for personal use as well as professional use, preventing identity theft all across the board. For many people, this is an easy step to take and though an industrial shredder machine might be somewhat expensive, the industrial shredder machine is worth it to have.

The industrial office shredder, a form of the industrial shredder machine, should be in place at each and every office throughout this country. After all, an industrial shredder machine can provide secure paper shredding and reduce the risk of any customer identities from becoming stolen. Many an office or business space likely still uses a paper filing system and so an industrial office shredder or other such high capacity paper shredder can be of immense use, at least until the switch is maid to a digital filing system. Even in such cases, having an industrial shredder machine around can still be good – just in case a paper needs to be shredded. It’s certainly better to be overcautious than undercautious when dealing with matters like potential identity theft.

Staying on top of all of your financial and personal information is another great way to prevent yourself from ever becoming a victim of identity theft. And even if you were to be targeted by such a crime, you would be ably to rectify the problem quickly. Far too many people are actually oblivious to the fact that they have become victims to identity theft, something that can hurt them more and more as time passes on. In fact, the data surrounding this more than backs this up, showing that nearly one quarter (24%, to be just a bit more exact) of all identity fraud victims only actually discovered that they were victims in the first place by total accident. Therefore, the importance of staying on top of all of your vital information is critical to prevent yourself from becoming victimized in the same way.