Real Estate Innovation

Frequently Asked Credit Questions about Identity Theft

How Do Thieves Steal My Identity?

Many criminals and thieves want to steal your personal ID and they can use many different and often successful tactics to do so.

Criminals have developed many different methods to steal you ID and we have listed just a few of the most common ways here so that you will be more aware of what they do.

Looking for personal information on letters and statements in your trash.

Stealing personal documents during burglaries and other crimes.

Removing letters and packages that are left outside for you.

Stealing ladies handbags and men’s wallets while they are not looking or by pick-pocketing.

Taking on the identity of a dead person and pretending that they are still alive.

Redirecting someone’s post to their own address to obtain their personal details.

Getting your credit card receipts so they can see your credit card number and other details.

Often these identity theft criminals are part of a larger organized gang set up specifically to obtain personal identities from people.

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?

If your identity is stolen there numerous ways in which you might find out about it.

When you find out quickly there is a good chance that you will be in time to stop fraud taking place.

Here are some of the more likely scenarios for indications of identity theft:

You get a statement for a new credit card, which you never applied for.

Your mail contains a bank statement for an account you know nothing about.

Unknown or unrecognizable purchases appear on your credit card statements.

You see transactions on your bank statement that should not be there.

You a get letter or call from your bank or credit card company about unusual transactions.

Therefore it makes great sense to pay careful attention to all your financial statements and the post you receive to ensure nothing occurs which is out of the ordinary.

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 effects of identity fraud can be financially embarrassing and frustrating to resolve.

Trying to prevent identity theft is the easiest option!

A proven method for doing this is to monitor your credit report frequently at your credit reference agency, so you can quickly detect unexpected activities.

If you monitor your credit report in this way you will get to know about potential criminal activity using your name as soon as possible and put yourself in a strong position to stop fraud.