Limit the amount of personal information you disclose

• Don’t give out personal data on the phone, through the mail or over

the Internet unless you initiated the contact or you know and trust the recipient.

• Never post your full name, Social Security number, address, phone number or account numbers on publicly accessible sites.

• Be careful before sharing details on social media, and consider restricting access to your social pages to a small group of friends. Likewise, think carefully about the family information you reveal in public records, such as birth and wedding announcements and obituaries.

“Historically, people didn’t need to think twice about this, but now you could give away answers to security questions or the building blocks for identity theft,” says Garely.