Frequently Asked Credit Questions about Identity Theft
How Do Thieves Steal My Identity?
Your identity can easily be stolen by thieves and criminals who will use many different but often successful methods to steal identities from unsuspecting individuals.
The ways in which they do this are numerous, but some of the more popular that they use are listed here for you:
Taking personal documents that you have put out in your rubbish.
Burglars will collect your details from documents when they steal from your home.
Stealing post and parcels from front doorsteps.
Removing purses, handbags and wallets while the owner is not paying attention.
Taking on the identity of a dead person and pretending that they are still alive.
Arranging for letters and packages to be re-directed to a different address.
Getting your credit card receipts so they can see your credit card number and other details.
Today many identity thieves operate as part of large and organized criminal gangs who deliberately target personal identity information.
Thus as well as being defrauding your run the risk that your identity could also be used to commit even worse crimes which might be connected to trafficking or even terrorism.
How Will I Know If Personal Identity Has Been Stolen?
There are many ways in which you might find out that your identity has been stolen.
When you find out quickly there is a good chance that you will be in time to stop fraud taking place.
Each entry in the list below could be considered an indicator that your identity has been stolen:
A new credit card statement that you have never seen before arrives addressed to you.
You receive a new bank statement for an account you did not open.
Unknown or unrecognizable purchases appear on your credit card statements.
Your bank account statement lists items you never bought.
Unusual credit card transaction cause your credit card company to call you.
So you should always pay careful attention to both your bank and credit card statements and everything your receive through the mail which is a little different from normal.
Ignoring the threat and failing to carefully monitor your financial transactions could mean that identify fraud will take place before you know what is happening.
The consequences can be very frustrating and a real pain to resolve.
Prevention is better than cure!
The best way to find out is to obtain a copy of your credit report on a regular basis from one of the major credit reference agencies.
Frequent checks of your credit report mean that you put yourself in a much better position for getting a early warning of identity theft so you can do something to prevent fraud taking place.
