How To Avoid Becoming An Identity Theft Victim

James Jackson is considered a "founding father" of identity theft. Jackson is sitting in a federal prison. He used to spend a lot of time stealing people's identity.

Jackson says some of his victim's are famous actors, corporate executives, even a federal judge. Jackson says he no longer wants to steal peoples identities, he wants to prevent it from happening to you.

Jackson says most identity thieves " pretext." Jackson says a good pretexter only needs your name and another piece of information about you. He says with a few phone calls the pretexter can find out just about anything else.

Jackson says pretexters can convince employees at places like insurance companies, medical offices, government agencies, retail stores and mortgage companies to give away your personal information away. The employees do not even realize they have done anything wrong.

Jackson says in addition to safeguarding your social security number, make sure when possible, critical data is removed from work related documents.