Checklist: Do you know how to protect yourself from fraud?

Each year, millions of Americans are impacted by fraud, data breaches and identity theft. Fortunately, there are numerous steps you can take to help protect your financial information from falling in the wrong hands.

Your security and privacy are of the utmost importance to your Ameriprise financial advisor. When you work with Ameriprise Financial, know that we’re committed to helping you protect your financial information and your assets from fraudulent activity. As part of our commitment to keeping client accounts safe and secure, all client accounts are backed by our Online Security Guarantee.

Beyond these measures, here’s how to recognize and protect yourself from fraud:

Regularly review your financial activity and documents

Regularly monitoring your financial activity and proper record retention is foundational to helping keep your information safe. Here are few steps that can help protect your financial information:

• Regularly review activity on your financial accounts. This could include keeping track of financial transaction confirmations, account statements and reports. To minimize the effort involved on your part, set up alerts to receive instant notifications on questionable account activity. If you spot any errors or irregularities, report them to the bank or firm holding the account.
• Shred documents that contain personal information once you no longer need them. Credit card receipts, billing statements and preapproved credit offers, for example, should be shredded before you discard them.
• Protect yourself against mail theft. Promptly remove incoming mail from your mailbox or get a mailbox with a lock. For outgoing mail — especially when sending checks — consider mailing the letters from a post office instead of outgoing mail or a collections box.
• Switch your financial accounts to paperless delivery. Doing so will save paper, can reduce the risk of mail fraud and perhaps save money, since many companies waive account service fees when you go paperless.

Learn more: How to keep your financial records organized

Monitor your login history

Regularly review your account login history to stay informed of any unusual activity and catch unauthorized access to your accounts. Keeping track of the devices used to access your account as well as time and location can help alert you if your account could be compromised. If you believe there has been an unauthorized login to your account:

• Change your password to prevent any other device from accessing your account.
• Check your transaction history and report any unfamiliar transactions.
• Update your security settings and enroll in 2-Step Verification to add an additional layer of protection to your account.

Enroll in 2-Step Verification

Using 2-Step Verification is one of the best ways to help prevent unauthorized access, even if your password is stolen or compromised. Add it to all your online accounts, such as: finance, banking, social media, utilities and email. Unlike single-factor authentication (such as a password), 2-Step Verification offers added protection, usually by requiring a code sent to your device or a physical identifier such as a fingerprint, voice or facial recognition.

Use a secure password manager

Keep your digital information safer by using unique and random passwords for different online accounts. This means not using the same password — or even a version of the same password — more than once.

To make things easier, consider a password manager. These apps for your phone, computer or tablet generate random, secure passwords that are saved and automatically entered when you visit your online accounts. To gain access, you just need to remember a single password for your password manager account.

Set up alerts on your financial accounts

Stay one step ahead of fraudulent activity by setting up alerts on your bank accounts, investment accounts and credit cards — so you receive instant notifications on questionable account activity. These notices — which can come in email, text or pop-up mobile alerts — can help you quickly identify and rectify suspicious transactions. You also may choose to receive notifications for foreign transactions or purchases over a certain dollar amount.

Review your credit reports regularly

The law requires the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — to provide a free copy of your credit report once per year. When looking at your report, look for inquiries and activity on your accounts that you can’t explain and see if there are any open accounts that can be closed. If you find any suspicious activity or errors, file a dispute with the credit-reporting bureau that recorded it. You can also sign up online with each credit bureau directly to check your report digitally instead.

To proactively avoid potential problems, consider staggering your credit report requests from each agency throughout the year — or visit the credit bureau websites regularly — so you don’t go too long without checking.

Learn more: Credit scores, explained: A guide to understanding your credit score

Sign up for free credit monitoring

While a credit report may identify a problem after the fact, it will not alert you to issues as they come up. If you want to track credit report issues in real time, you can sign up for credit monitoring at each credit bureau, which will send alerts whenever any activity occurs on your credit report: applying for a loan, opening an account or paying off a credit card. If you get an alert for activity you don’t recognize, you know you may need to act.

Consider freezing your credit

A credit freeze prohibits credit agencies from disclosing your credit report to anyone requesting the data, which can effectively reduce the risk of someone fraudulently opening an account in your name. Implementing a credit freeze is free and doesn’t impact your credit score or affect your ability to use your existing accounts. However, you will have to request a temporary lift on the freeze — from all three credit agencies — whenever you want to open a new credit account.

Be aware of common types of fraud

There are many types of financial fraud, but here’s how to recognize some of the most common:

• Romance scams: These typically involve feigned romantic intention toward a victim, gaining their affection and then using that goodwill to commit fraud.
• Lottery scams: The victim is informed that they’ve been randomly selected as the winner of a large sum of money, a car or a free vacation. To collect the winnings, however, they must pay an initial fee or tax.
• Phishing fraud: A scammer sends a fraudulent message designed to trick someone into giving them sensitive or financial information. Phishing scams can occur via email, text or phone calls.
• Advance fee fraud: The victim is promised a large sum of money in return for an up-front payment, which the fraudster claims to need before providing the promised windfall.
• Debit card fraud: An unauthorized use of debit card funds.

Keep personal information off social networks

Even seemingly benign social media posts can reveal details fraudsters can use to impersonate you. To minimize the risk of identity theft, avoid posting key personal details to social networking sites, including addresses, phone numbers or anything that might give hints to your passwords or answers to security questions.

If you suspect you’ve been a victim of identity fraud

If you suspect you’ve been a victim of identity fraud or theft, immediately report the suspected activity to the bank, company or financial institution holding the account.

If you’re a client and suspect unauthorized activity on your Ameriprise Financial accounts or if you’ve been a victim of fraud outside of Ameriprise, see how to report fraud for security measures to take and next steps. You can also go to the Federal Trade Commission’s identitytheft.gov to report the theft and initiate a recovery plan.

We’re committed to your security

When you work with an Ameriprise financial advisor, you can be confident that your financial and personal information security and financial wellbeing is a priority.