🚨 Holiday ID theft: Three silent scams that steal your identity

The holidays bring shopping, travel and stress, the perfect storm identity thieves wait for all year. Scammers use the chaos of the season to run three quiet, sophisticated tricks that snag the personal info they need to impersonate you for life.

Read each one, so you aren’t their next victim.

You’re waiting on packages, and the crooks know it. Scammers blast out fake texts and emails pretending to be FedEx, UPS or USPS saying a delivery “failed” and you need to click a link to reschedule. Don’t do it. 

That link takes you to a phony page designed to pressure you into entering your name, address and sometimes even the last four digits of your Social Security number. They don’t want to fix a delivery. They want the core PII, your personally identifiable information, needed to open loans or credit lines in your name.

Picture this: You’re at the airport or grabbing coffee, trying to snag a deal. You jump on public Wi‑Fi to save data and type in your credit card or log-in. Bad idea. 

Hackers can intercept everything and suddenly have access to your entire shopping profile, birth date, home address, saved cards and your passwords. And because most people reuse passwords, that one rushed purchase can unlock multiple accounts you never meant to share.

Even old‑school gift cards aren’t safe. Thieves hit stores, secretly record the numbers on the backs of gift cards, and wait. The moment you load money at the register, a bot drains the balance online. 

Then you call “customer service,” already stressed, and scammers try to squeeze more info from you like transaction emails or phone numbers. That emotional moment becomes the perfect setup for long‑term identity theft.

Every piece of stolen PII and every compromised log-in is another key a criminal has to your financial life. ID theft happens every five seconds in the U.S. You can’t be on guard around the clock, but your protection can. 

✅ That’s why I use and trust NordProtect, a sponsor of my national radio show. They watch your banking, credit and personal data 24/7 and catch those tiny, quiet signs of identity theft before they explode into a disaster. It helps me sleep at night.

And for Black Friday, it’s 71% off, just $4.27 a month. I used to have LifeLock, but it got super expensive and I got tired of the constant upsells. 

Don’t wait until you’re staring at a loan you never opened. Lock in this Black Friday limited-time deal now and protect your money and financial security.

Photo credit(s): Gemini

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This newsletter and its content are intended for informational purposes only. They are provided without warranty of any kind. You shouldn’t construe anything provided here as legal, health, medical, technical, tax, investment, financial or any other kind of advice.

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