Do you know how easy it is to infiltrate, expose, and compromise any type of health care agency? Identity theft can easily happen right under your nose, so the best defense is a good offense. Know your rights and know how you can protect your business by performing an employee criminal background check for prospective employees during the hiring process. Unfortunately, as crime statistics for identity theft continue to soar, an employee criminal background check is more important than ever before for corporations and physician’s offices of any size.

Any employee can be a potential thief, so an employee criminal background check should be conducted on every new hire, whether it is a full time in home caregiver or a temporary /transitional caregiver. As the aging baby boomers discover it is better to have in-home care, and now economy continues to recover, more agencies are hiring more employees, it’s important to know the “do’s and don’ts” of an employee criminal background check. An employee criminal background check ensures that you are protected from identity theft predators or opportunistic criminals masquerading as enthusiastic job applicants. There are many things to consider when performing an employee criminal background check, including the components, laws, and processes necessary to ensure a new employee can be trusted with sensitive information.

What’s Included in an Employee Criminal Background Check?

Every employee background check also includes a thorough employee criminal background check. Some of the information is public and some is private, but all of the information is important in assessing a job applicant. Although the type of information checked varies from state to state and county to county, an employee criminal background check can include:

• Credit, driving, criminal, education, medical, drug test, court, military, and bankruptcy records
• Social Security Number
• Vehicle registration
• Property ownership
• Past employment
• Professional and personal references

All of this information is invaluable, but one aspect that is often overlooked is the credit report. A poor credit rating makes the average applicant a higher risk for identity theft. Additionally, research shows that one in four disputes over information on an employee criminal background check is connected to identity theft issues, so take every precaution to thoroughly evaluate every prospective employee’s credit and criminal records.

Are There Employee Criminal Background Check Laws?

Yes! They vary by state, but the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) set national standards for performing an employee criminal background check. The law only applies to an employee criminal background check conducted by a consumer reporting agency, which is a firm that administers the employee criminal background check on your behalf. If you decide to perform an employee criminal background check in-house, make sure you follow your state’s background check laws carefully. Remember: Employees have rights, too!

According to the FCRA, some information cannot be reported in an employee criminal background check:

• Accounts in collection longer than seven years
• Paid tax liens beyond seven years
• Bankruptcies after ten years
• Arrest records, civil suits, and civil judgments after seven years

Employee Criminal Background Check: An Overview

Follow this employee criminal background check “cheat sheet” to safeguard your company from identity thieves and potential criminals in the workplace:

• Who: Every employee!
• What: A comprehensive employee criminal background check that abides by all applicable laws
• When: Before an employee is hired
• Why: To protect your business and your employees!
• How: Either in-house or by a consumer reporting agency

If you have questions or need assistance performing an employee criminal background check, don’t hesitate to the contact the experts! It can save your business from disaster. Contact Linda Vincent at 310-831-4400 or connect with her at linda@theidentityadvocate.com

Mobile identity theft is one of the fastest growing types of identity theft due to the prevalence of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. With over one billion smartphones being used globally and research predicting this number will double by 2015, the soaring sales of mobile devices come at a time when identity theft is at an all-time high.

There was one victim of identity theft every three seconds in the U.S. in 2012, totaling 12.6 million consumers—an increase of over one million victims compared to the previous year and accounting for more than $21 billion, according to Javelin Strategy & Research’s 2013 Identity Fraud Report. These numbers are expected to rise, especially as our use of mobile devices continues to increase.

Preventing Mobile Identity Theft

Whether it’s for email, instant messaging, surfing the web, shopping online, paying bills, or even banking, we store and share an immense amount of personal data on our mobile devices. Unless steps are taken to protect it, this data is vulnerable to identity thieves who want to use it to create fake identities and steal money.

Other than being convenient to use everywhere we go, it’s important to remember that smartphones are no different than desktops or laptop computers when it comes to hackers, viruses, malware, and spyware. Their apps and mobile browsers enable us to store personal information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account data in addition to our contacts and other sensitive information. When this data is breached, however, the resulting identity theft can have severe and long-lasting consequences.

Fortunately, there are many actions you can take to secure your hand-held devices and avoid mobile identity theft. Here are a few tips:

• Create a strong password that is required to unlock your phone and access data. Make sure to set up the phone to automatically lock when it has not been used for a specified period of time.
• Never share sensitive data such as passwords or credit card numbers over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection. Even something as simple as purchasing movie tickets on an iPhone using a public Wi-Fi network can give a nearby hacker the opportunity to steal your data and use it to create a fake identity.
• Carefully review your phone bills for sudden increases in data usage. You also want to be on the lookout for charges from third-party content providers for services and apps you haven’t authorized. These can be signs that your phone has been hacked and puts you at risk for mobile identity theft.
• Keep your operating system and apps up-to-date. These updates are important for keeping your smartphone or tablet current with all of the latest security enhancements.
• Make sure you are shopping on secure websites by verifying that the “s” is in the “https://” in the address bar. Websites using “http://” at the beginning of the website address are unsecure.

Professional Offices and Mobile Identity Theft

When trusted professionals or businesses use mobile devices to share information with clients, the same types of mobile identity theft are possible. Take, for example, healthcare professionals. Over 80 percent of physicians polled in an ABA Health survey revealed that they have used personal mobile devices to access the protected health information of their patients. This puts their patients at risk for mobile medical identity theft even when patients haven’t done anything to put their own identity in jeopardy.

Healthcare professionals can help secure medical records on mobile devices by creating passwords to authenticate access to patient information, and never sharing data over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection.

Mobile Identity Theft Protection Services

In spite of all the safeguards you put in place, hackers will always try to stay one step ahead of you and the available technology. Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” your identity will be compromised. When it happens to you, don’t be caught without a mobile identity theft prevention plan.

There are a number of free mobile identity theft services, such as AVG, that offer anti-virus plans for mobile devices. Phones can be locked and located remotely, suspicious calls or text messages can be blocked, and widgets can detect questionable website activity.

The best identity theft protection service on the market is ID Theft Solutions. Managed by law enforcement professionals, ID Theft Solutions is the most comprehensive way to ensure your identity is recovered when it is stolen.

You can always count on The Identity Advocate to stay current on all of the latest mobile identity theft threats and solutions to help keep you and your mobile devices safe. Learn more about preventing mobile identity theft by visiting www.TheIdentityAdvocate.com or calling 310.831.4400.

This article was originally published on PInow.com.