Guard Yourself Against Tax-Time Identity Theft

It's tax season again, a time of the year my husband and I never look forward to... unless we actually get money back, of course. Some of the companies I work with send electronic copies of the 1099 forms via email and others arrive in our mailbox. As we've learned, identity theft is at an all-time high, which means we need to guard ourselves against the possibility and do what we can to keep safe from potential predators.

Where do you keep and compile your tax forms? Tax forms contain a great deal of our own personal information and it is very, very important to keep these private and safe. When I was younger, I never took much care putting away my tax forms and just put them in a drawer in my room, but now I know better. When I receive the forms via email, I print them out and make sure the email is completely deleted and erased not only from my inbox, but also from trash. Why? Because I've had my email hacked before and no telling what kind of information they could have retrieved. Tax forms not only include information about income, but also has social security numbers and birth dates. When attempting to guard against Tax-Time Identity Theft, it is important to keep this in mind and be safe with your forms.


Once the forms are printed out and received in our mailbox, we keep them filed in folders to keep them nice and neat, but, as an extra precaution, we keep them stored in our lock box, which we keep hidden in our home. All of our important information, from passports and birth certificates to taxes and car papers, are stored in a lock box to which only my husband and I have a key.

We've written about Child Identity Theft in the past and I believe this time of year is the time to start guarding not only yourself, but your children against identity theft. Billions of dollars are given out to people who have used fraudulent social security numbers. Even worse, these social security numbers usually belong to children. They are less likely to be discovered for many years and, by then, the perpetrator is usually long gone, leaving a financial disaster for the child.


We recommend Identity Guard because they have been protecting people from the threat of identity theft for over a decade. They also offer a new program, kID Sure, which helps guard children, so the entire family can be better protected from the risk of identity theft. Do you guard yourself against identity theft? If not, now may be the time to do so!

Disclosure: This service was provided to me for review at no charge. In addition, I received monetary compensation. All opinions written are my own.