Keep Your Identity: Be on the lookout for scams.

No one is immune from identity theft, regardless of how careful you are. Depending on your habits, affiliations and activities, these variables may be a significant factor in the manner in which you might become an identity theft victim.

The Internet can serve a very useful purpose and keeps us informed about this crime and its trends. At the same time, it can be a trap, so if you receive electronic or junk mail luring you with enticements, you should know to immediately delete, trash or shred.

Here are some examples of electronic, paper and phone enticements you should be very careful of:

• •We’ll remove the virus we found for $100. These are typically bogus tech-support scams. Of course, there is no virus, so you pay for an unnecessary service. The crook may also take the opportunity to install mock antivirus software that later starts “finding” nonexistent malware. That can cost you a bundle for removal. You also may have provided a credit card number to someone you will wish you hadn’t.
• Confirm the flight reservation you didn’t make. These are phishing and malware scams. If you follow the instructions, you might end up downloading malware designed to take control of your computer and turn it into a spamming robot, harm it with a virus, or mine your files for financial information.
• You’ve just won a $100 gift card! Burglary. Someone claiming to be from a local store calls to tell you that you’ve just won the prized plastic, and you must come and pick it up. The game: get you out of the house, allowing thieves to break-in, grab up information they can use time and time again.
• Now you really can see who views your Facebook profile! Social media sites. They’ve long since become fertile ground for fakery. In the scam, targeted victims receive a link that drives the curious to a fake Facebook website, then asked to “like” the app or other bait, which forwards spam to other “friends,” all of whom are asked to complete a survey, collecting opinions and personal information.
• Cut your credit-card interest rate to 4.75 percent. A lower rate? Sounds great. The service costs $695 up front, and you must fill out a “financial profile form,” detailing debts, balances, credit limits, interest rates, plus your name, address and of course your Social Security number. I suspect you know what to do if you get this call.
• Want a $17.50-an-hour- job? An identity theft scam. When applicants (who became victims), went to a library (not in Naples) to fill out applications with their name, date of birth, Social Security number and more at the request of a person claiming to be a recruiter — and then later went to the store that was allegedly hiring for training — they learned that the recruiter wasn’t associated with the store at all. Know this, job-seekers: face-to-face job interviews are a new brazen way to extract information for ID theft.
• And as the holiday shopping season approaches, watch out for this one, under the very good impersonation of a credit card company or store you frequent. “We’d like to encourage each of you, our valued members, to be watching your email for a very special Member Referral Program from us that will enable you to earn extra holiday cash!” Be on the lookout for this email! If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Contributing information source: ConsumerReports.org.

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ID thefts of 49 cops lead to crime ring, feds say.

The investigation began in March with the discovery that 49 Aventura police officers and six other people connected to the city government were victims of identity theft and tax fraud in the 2011 income tax season, authorities said.

On Tuesday, the inquiry led to six South Florida residents being indicted on charges they operated a major identity theft ring out of a Pompano Beach home on the 1200 block of Northeast Fifth Street.

The four men and two women are accused of using the money to do everything from make child support payments online to take vacations in Orlando and rent BMWs at Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Miami airports.

Brothers Jeffery McCarthy and Christopher McCarthy, their girlfriends Marysol Hernandez and Teresa Calderon, cousin Floyd Harper, and friend Brian Gamble, all in their 20s and 30s, face multiple counts of fraud and identity theft in federal court. They all deny the allegations.

The fraud involved filing unauthorized income tax returns on behalf of victims and opening lines of credit, investigators said.

According to court records filed by detectives, the Aventura Police Department discovered earlier this year that 49 police officers, a civilian employee of the department, a retiree, three other city workers and a spouse had all been victimized by tax fraud and identity theft in the prior year.

Detectives wrote in court records that they uncovered a link to the Pompano Beach home the McCarthy brothers shared and found that the Internet service at that address had been used to file about 432 tax returns in a two-week period in January.

Investigators also found that USAA Federal Savings Bank employees were conducting a separate fraud investigation regarding the same residence related to about $2 million in lines of credit opened using victims’ names and variations of the same Pompano Beach address. The six were arrested last month.

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7 ways to protect yourself from ID theft while holiday shopping.

South Florida has the highest rate of identity theft of any metro area in the nation so consumers here need to especially protect themselves from identity theft while shopping during the holidays.

Here are seven tips from the website IDentity Theft 911 at www.idt911.com:

1. Shop on secure sites that have “https” in the address bar and a yellow padlock logo to the right of the Web browser address bar. Double-click on the lock to see a digital certificate of the website. Review these certificates on unfamiliar sites.
2. Make sure you enter correct URLs. “Hackers often buy misspelled domains to trick people into entering personal information,” according to the website.
3. Never enter your Social Security number or passwords to e-mail and bank accounts as part of the buying process with online retailers. South Floridians have especially been stung with thieves stealing their Social Security numbers to file fake federal tax refunds before the honest taxpayers can. Earlier this fall, the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported that Florida has the highest rate of stolen identity tax refund fraud in the nation.
4. Use different passwords for online retailers, personal e-mail and banks accounts. If hackers crack one password, then they won’t have access to others. Also, don’t save personal information on an online retail website. Retailers will offer convenience and better deals, but many customer databases are breached by identity thieves. It’s not worth the risk.
5. Beware of phishing e-mail scams that include website links advertising “incredible deals.” Don’t click on them. Type the link directly into your browser.
6. Use credit cards online, not debit cards, to pay for merchandise. Try to use credit cards with low limits to minimize the damage if a thief takes over the account. Or, use a “one-time” credit card number from payment processors such as PayPal. Also, don’t link a bank account to an online pay service such as PayPal. Hackers could break into the PayPal account and drain money from the linked bank account.
7. Install and update antivirus, anti-malware and firewall software on your computer. Don’t forget to update its operating system and Internet browser with the latest security patches.