Stuff You Should Know... We're Not Talking Pocket Change Here Ten Steps To Prevent Identity Theft (as reported by MSNBC) Memorize your Social Security number. Never carry your Social Security card in your wallet or purse.  Store your wallet or purse in a secure location while at work or public places such as fitness centers. Buy a cross-cut shredder. Use it as a secure means of disposal for documents with personal or financial information—such as unsolicited credit-card applications, credit receipts or utility bills. Memorize your PINs. Do not write them down unless you must. Never keep them with their cards, and do not share them with anyone. If possible, do not use the same PIN for multiple cards or services. Do not provide personal information over the phone, e-mail or Internet unless the recipient is a known and trusted source. Make sure the Web sites you use provide encryption technology to safeguard your information. Most Web sites provide some acknowledgement of this, which may appear as a yellow padlock symbol in the status bar of your browser or as a pop-up window indicating an encrypted or secured site. Call the credit reporting agencies at 888-5-OPTOUT to remove your name from all mailing lists the agencies supply to direct marketers. Deposit checks directly to your bank account. Do not mail checks from your home mailbox if it is unsecured. Do not have unnecessary personal information, such as Social Security or driver's license numbers, printed on personal checks. Do business with responsible companies that take steps to protect their customers from identity theft.   Buying Insurance On-Line What To Do, What Not To Do  We participate in on on-line service at localinsurance.com that has on-line buyers fill in a questionnaire that gets forwarded to us. The quality of information was seldom sufficient for us to provide our best quote. The submitted info was usually wrong or too incomplete to process a complete quote, so we wound up "Ball-parking" a premium estimate. People were insecure about entering in social security numbers and other personal information. The instant on-line quotes are just "ball park" estimates too. When a completed application is submitted to the company they reserve the right to change the premium. We had clients jump at these "lower" cost policies, only to have them call us back to see if they could get back with their old company. Sometimes you lose continuous coverage credits or renewal discounts so when the policy is rewritten it is at a higher premium. A word to the wise - get these too good to be true estimates guaranteed in writing before you even think about replacing your coverage. Very few of these low-ball estimates ever pan out! With the secure servers of today you should enter in the information as completely as possible in order to be sure you are getting an accurate quote. Two or three extra minutes in making full and complete disclosure makes a world of difference in getting an accurate quote you can use. When you request an "on-line" quote form from us we email or fax a form to you which is returned by fax, or regular mail to protect your privacy. We then respond by email or telphone to review the quote with you. Our motto is to do it right, or don't do it. About On-Line quotes... Free Flag Decals Call the office if you need a car flag or window flag decal. We have many through the generosity of Erie Insurance Company. They are the static kind (non-sticky) in case you want to move the decal later.