Here are 15 things you should remove from your wallet and store in a safe place, depending on how often you need to access them:
1. Social Security card. You do not need it for daily use, and criminals could use it to open lines of credit in your name or sell it to another criminal.
2. Multiple credit cards and credit card receipts. Choose one credit card and one debit card you wish to use the most and leave the others at home. Multiple credit cards are a gold mine for criminals. They can easily charge items online or send runners to different stores.
3. Checkbook, or even one blank check. The days when you might need one for a purchase are mostly in the past.
4. Work ID card. This will have your name and other identifying information that could be used for a targeted phishing (spearphishing) campaign to perpetrate a scam within your workplace.
5. Passport or passport card. These are gold to criminals. As the U.S. State Department notes, “The U.S. passport is considered to be the most valuable identity document in the world. It can be used to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and allows its bearer access to virtually every country in the world.”
6. List of your passwords. If your passwords are stolen, the criminal has the keys to your accounts.
7. Gift card not fully redeemed. There’s no stopping a thief from using those funds, which are essentially like cash.
8. Birth certificate. This essential piece of paper contains enough information for a criminal to create fake accounts in your name, and access your own accounts. It’s considered a “breeder” document, which means it can be used to obtain other sensitive documents and information related to you.
9. Library card. It sounds benign, but a criminal can always check out lots of books and sell them for a buck or two apiece.
10. House key. Thieves could find your address from the contents of a stolen wallet.
11. Legal paperwork. Don’t carry any legal documents in your wallet or purse that you don’t need that day. It sounds obvious, “We’ve had reports on the Helpline where people had their wallets or purses stolen and their divorce documents were included.” That means the thief has your sensitive financial data, children’s birthdates and other personal information.
12. Checks made out to you. You don’t just want to keep your own checks at home. If criminals get their hands on a check you’ve received, they can forge your signature and cash it. Consider depositing your check using your bank’s smartphone app.
13. Your PIN. It’s bad enough to lose your credit card: You don’t want to give them the key to your account, says Frank McKenna, chief fraud strategist at the fraud detection company Point Predictive. “You would be surprised at how many times people told me they wrote their PINs on the back of the credit cards so they would not forget them.”
14. Your cryptocurrency seed phrase or recovery phrase. As with passwords or PINs, some people might keep the seed phrase (a sequence of 12 or 24 words that a crypto investor needs to access or recover cryptocurrency on blockchains or crypto wallets) in their actual wallets, notes McKenna. Criminals can use it to wipe out your wealth.
15. Receipts. Don’t carry around those store and restaurant receipts, says Steve Weisman, an attorney and fraud authority who reports on scams for his website, scamicide.com. “Even though your full credit card number won’t be shown on the receipt, an industrious identity thief can use the last five digits to construct legitimate- appearing emails that seem to come from your credit card company or a company that you do business with,” he says. Their goal? To get you to provide them with the full number.
Only carry your Medicare card when you must To help protect your identity, your Medicare card no longer carries your Social Security number. But your Medicare number — unique to you — should be closely guarded and never shared with anyone who contacts you out of the blue by phone, email or text or in person. Only carry your Medicare card when you are headed to an appointment that might require it. Your Medicare number should also be closely guarded from emails and phone calls (in reference to AARP news).
