Identity Theft

Identity Theft occurs when someone acquires your personal information and uses it without your knowledge to apply for credit cards, make unauthorized purchases, gain access to your bank accounts or apply for credit and obtain loans in your name.

Fastest Growing Crime in the World!

Incidence of Identity Theft in the U.S. has grown by more than 40% in 2003 over the previous year. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) estimates 4.7% of the U.S. population, or 10 million people were victims of identity theft in the last year, with total losses of US$53 billion, US$5 billion of this were losses by victims, the remaining losses were picked up by businesses.

Identity Theft has become the "Best Practice" for criminals, offering many benefits to the perpetrator including;

  • The anonymous nature of the crime - allowing criminals to hide their true identities while they pursue illegal activities,
  • The ease in committing the crime in this technological era,
  • The relative ease to financially support themselves with fraudulent loans or credit card purchases.

The Effects:

Many Identity Theft victims use words such as 'haunted,' 'devastated' and violated to describe their ordeal, feeling victimized by the process.

Many victims do not discover their identity had been stolen until they were turned down attempting to obtain credit. Others don't find out until they receive a call from collection agencies or government agencies where debts have been incurred.

Identity theft victims are often unable to get new credit cards or loans because their credit ratings have been destroyed through the process.

The average financial loss of a victim who suffered from new accounts being opened was $1,200, and $500 for on average for all victims of ID theft.

Time spent in resolving problems stemming from ID theft ranged from 1 hour to over 240 hours, with a direct correlation between the amount of time to discovery of any misuse of information.

Problems experienced as a result of having personal information misused include problems obtaining or using a credit card, harassed by collectors, rejection of finance, banking problems, insurance rejection, having utilities cut off, civil suits filed and criminal investigations.

Victims: What would have helped?

After victims have completed the whole process of recovery from identity theft, prevention measures were cited as the second most important action that would have helped them, only after better investigation by law enforcement. These prevention measures are in the form of better awareness on their own part of how to prevent and respond to identity theft. 

Specific areas where greater awareness was cited included taking greater security precautions in handling their personal information, such as destroying materials that contain personal information instead of simply putting them in the trash, not placing personal information on the Internet, and securing their personal information in their homes and at work. Maintaining greater vigilance, such as monitoring their mail, billing cycles, and credit reports more carefully was also cited. Lastly, knowing who to contact, and notifying the affected companies and credit reporting agencies more quickly when they detected something wrong, was identified as an important factor in recovering from identity theft.

FraudWatch International sees itself meeting the needs of consumers by providing education of prevention measures and providing information on what to do if consumers become victims.

Read all about how thieves steal personal information here: Click Here

Read about how stolen information is used and types of identity theft here: Click Here

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