Occasionally when I work for a school district, I am asked to undergo a background check. That doesn’t bother me, because I’m going to be around the kids. If I were a parent of kids in that school, I’d hope that the school had made every effort to know that the performer was not a predator.

I’m not. And, I don’t have anything to hide. But, I don’t expect the district to take my word for it.

Have y’all ever had a background check done? They ask a you to give a lot of information about yourself!

• name
• Maiden name
• address
• date of birth
• place of birth
• driver’s license number
• Social Security number
• addresses of where you have lived for the last umpty-eleven years
• where you have worked for the last umpty-eleven years
• shoe size (not really, I made that one up)

A background check is pretty thorough. The district asks me to fill out all that information and then hand it over to a total stranger at the school district office! I don’t know about you, but that a frightening thought for me. I want to see the background check on the person who will be handling mine!

A few months back, a school needed this information at the last minute (someone had “forgotten” that they needed a background check). They asked me to FAX this information to the school office. I declined.

Have y’all ever spent much time hanging out in a school office? It can get crazy in there, especially in the morning before school starts. In fact, I distinctly remember standing at the front counter at a school, and idly watching a fax print out on the machine that was sitting right there in view of everyone!

I don’t need a job badly enough to risk the possibility that any fool could see my personal information. They could steal my identity in a heartbeat.

More than a decade ago, a friend of mine had her identity stolen, and she is still suffering from the ramifications of it. It seems that no matter what she does, her credit has been terminaly affected. Her identity was stolen when she applied for a car loan at a dealership where she worked!

You can’t be too cautious about your personal information. Identity theft is a real problem, and the thieves are getting more sophisticated all the time. My friend, Misty Dawn, wrote an excellent post about identity theft with cautions about your credit cards use. You need to read it. After I did, I started thinking about other things that I’m careless about.

My purse is one of them!

I ran across an article when I was looking at “bags” the other day for a silly post about bags. It talked about how to guard against purse theft.

• First, pick the right purse. Drat! I’m a sucker for cute purses and vintage purses, but they aren’t always the best to carry. Avoid open top purses and pressure clasps in favor of one that has a flap top over a zippered compartment. So what if you can’t reach your cell phone in time. That’s why you have voice mail.
• Carry your purse properly. Don’t sling it over your back or have long, dangly straps. That makes a perfect target for a snatch and grab. Never wrap the strap on one side of your head with the purse on the other side of your body. In the case of a snatch and grab, you could get strangled! Carry that bag high, under your armpit, and to the front of your body.
• Always keep an eye on your purse. Don’t leave it on a table or counter and turn away from it. Do not leave it in the shopping cart while you ponder the prices of the canned peaches.
• Don’t set your purse on the floor in a restaurant. If you must, then put a chair leg or your foot through the strap.
• Be aware of what’s going on around you. Don’t get set up. Thieves sometimes work in groups, using the bump and slide in a crowd (when one thief jostles you and another takes your purse) or creating a commotion to draw your attention while another thief makes off with your handbag.

Even with taking every precaution, purse theft can still happen. If it does, act quickly to prevent identity theft! DO file a police report, alert all your credit card companies, and place a freeze on your credit report (so no stranger can get credit cards in your name).

TODAY, go photocopy all the credit cards and identity related cards in your wallet, so you have a record. Keep that in a safe place. Don’t trust your memory in cases of emergency. You know you will be too upset to remember everything.

I’d love to make jokes on this post, but identity theft is not a laughing matter. Has it ever happened to you? Do you have some other useful tips? If you are a blogger, write a post about it, and tell me. I’ll link you here. If you are not a blogger, tell me in a comment, and I can post it here. That one tidbit of information that you have may be all it takes to help someone else prevent a major calamity.

Y’all go make it a good day, and be careful out there!