One of the most common threats to your home security these days is identity theft. Why should this crime of stealing your personal information be considered an issue of home security? The answer to this question is plain and simple: most identity theft incidents actually occur because of actions that you do every single day in your house without thinking about it. Moreover, identity theft can lead to financial insecurity, which quite often threatens the position that you have in your home. It isn't unheard of, after all, for a family to lose their home because of thieves taking out mortgages and then never paying them back after stealing the real owners' identities. They might be able to prove that the mortgage was not theirs after a lengthy court battle, but at that point they might have already lost the comforts of modern life. For these reasons and countless more, identity theft is downright scary. You must protect yourself, and if you follow a few basic steps, you will be able to without much of a struggle. Without further ado, here are simple tips to keep safe:

1. Shred everything

If you have some extra cash on hand, investing in a small, lightweight shredder is not a bad idea. Or, you can always ask your boss if you can use the one in the office for some personal shredding, off of work hours of course! If neither option is available to you, then you are going to have to start doing some manual shredding. Now, you might begin to wonder, "what, precisely, will I be shredding? I'm not some executive at Enron! I have no secrets, nothing to hide at all!". Well, the truth is, everyone has some secrets. And most of those secrets that pertain to the shredding question have to do with personal information that could be used to access you accounts, or - even worse - open new ones in your name. This list would include: your credit card numbers; your full name, i.e. first, middle, last; your savings and/or checking account number; your debit card number and your pin; your passport number or a photocopy of the document. You also want to be wary of solicitations from banks that include blank checks or "fake" credit cards. Even documents that show your date of birth or previous addresses could be used for evil. Once these documents are shredded, you can feel comfortable putting them outside for the recycling pick-up, knowing that even if someone goes through your trash, there will be nothing to find!

2. Use one credit card for online purchases

In the age of ubiquitous Internet, very few people think about how going online and making purchases could jeopardize your home security anymore. But the fact is that it can. This is why it makes sense to only have one credit card that you use for online transactions. This way, if your home security is violated and someone steels you card number through a shady online transaction, you only have to cancel and recuperate the money from one account!