Consumers worldwide are rapidly adopting a digital lifestyle. Not only are laptops and mobile phones de rigueur for everyone in the family—from preteens to grandpa, online shopping, searching, banking, and social networking have become a part of nearly everyone’s daily life. According to Russell Research, 82 percent of those surveyed claim to conduct transactions online, from filing taxes to shopping for goods and services. And everyone everywhere is amassing more and more digital wealth—tax files stored on laptops, school records, and banking and credit card information. But accompanying all of the conveniences and enjoyment made possible by mobile computing and the Internet comes a big risk—identity theft.

A Big Problem that Is Getting Bigger
Every year, more than two million notebooks that may contain confidential personal data are stolen, and only 97 percent are recovered (Source: Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit, 2006). What’s more, 15 million individuals are victims of identity theft each year. It’s estimated that an ID is stolen every two seconds (Source: Processor, 2006). If that’s not reason enough to be concerned, take a look some additional statistics:

• Search engines, including reputable ones like Google and MSN, serve up eight billion risky sites every month
• About 80 percent of web sites are vulnerable to hackers
• And 70 percent of web visitors terminate ecommerce orders because they lack trust in web security
• Along with threats to PCs, new malware is beginning to plague the two billion smartphones that are being used like remote PCs to store personal information, surf the Internet, and send emails and text messages

Anti-theft Fundamentals for Your Computer
What can you do to defend your personal computer and smartphones against identity theft? Let’s start with some basic precautions. (For additional tips, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s identity theft site: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/.

• When setting up passwords for online transaction logins, stay away from the obvious. Choose passwords consisting of letters, numbers, and symbols, and make sure you hide the passwords in a safe place or memorize them if you can
• Never, never respond to spam emails or web sites—even if they look like legitimate companies—that ask you to provide banking information, your Social Security number, or credit card numbers
• Never click on a link to a financial institution’s web site. It’s safer to go to the site, enter the URL in your browser, and then log in.
• If you get rid of a hard drive or portable storage media like USB sticks, use overwrite software or destroy the drive
• Install and continuously update firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware to protect you and your family from hackers and the malware they write
• And last, but by no means least, protect your data itself by installing anti-theft software and updating it frequently

How and Why it Works
For airtight file protection for consumers, McAfee has recently released McAfee Anti-Theft File Protection, which is based on encryption technology. Encryption uses mathematical algorithms to scramble data and text and render it unreadable, providing privacy. Leveraging its recent acquisition of Safeboot, a company known for its strong encryption capabilities, McAfee has brought enterprise-class encryption—the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)—to the individual. So, in the unfortunate event that your laptop is lost or stolen, identity thieves would not be able to crack the code and extract data from the confidential files you store in your "digital" vaults.

Here’s how McAfee Anti-Theft works:

• The concept behind McAfee Anti-theft is simple. Think of a safety deposit box at your bank where you store valuable documents or items. To create a vault, you follow a simple two-step process: (1) create a password and (2) drag and drop important files into the vault. In fact, you can do a file “save as” in any program to encrypt any document on your PC.
• You can create as many vaults as you want to. Every user can create their own vaults that can’t be viewed by others on your PC unless you share your password. For example, if your family shares a PC, each family member can create his or her own vault. You can protect your important business files in your own vault, and your teenage daughter can hide her diary from prying eyes in a separate vault.
• You can also create vaults on portable media, such as USB drives or any media that is recognized as a drive on your PC. This comes in handy when you want to bring personal tax files to your accountant, for example. All you have to do is put the vault on the USB drive and give your accountant a password to access the data. You can even email the vault to someone.
• McAfee Anti-Theft provides persistent security. Even if you’re using your computer, no one can get into the data in the locked vaults.
• What happens if you forget your password? We've taken care of that too. McAfee Anti-Theft has a built-in safety valve. When you set up our program, you’re presented with some challenge questions. Later, by correctly answering these challenge questions, it's quick and easy to access and reset any vault's password, if necessary.

While we can't protect you from the cost of a lost computer, we are doing all we can to secure your often more Don’t let identity theft put you and your family at risk. There’s plenty you can do to prevent the consequences of this crime. All it takes is a dose of caution, common sense, and McAfee Anti-Theft. And, best of all, it couldn't be simpler. For more information about McAfee Anti-Theft File Protection, visit: http://us.mcafee.com/root/product.asp?productid=antitheft