Identity is who or what somebody is. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as the characteristics, feelings or beliefs that make people different from others.
In the world of personal and financial security, there are a few things that can identify a person – their name, date of birth, Social Security Number, address and mother’s maiden name. Using these, criminals can impersonate a victim and engage in many fraudulent activities. Identity theft is when someone uses another person’s personal or financial information without their permission.
How can identity theft impacts victims?
Identity theft can cause severe impact to victims.
- The identity thief can open new accounts without the victim’s knowledge
- New credit card accounts and make big purchases
- New bank accounts
- New email accounts
- New utilities accounts like phone, electricity, or gas account
- Obtain employment
- Claim the victim’s tax refunds
- Use the victim’s health insurance to get medical care
In addition to financial disaster, it takes up a lot of time to remedy and repair the damage and can lead to criminal issues as well. The imposter can commit crimes like extortion or give your information to a police officer if arrested.
What are the warning signs of identity theft?
Some red flags one can look for include –
- Not getting utility bills
- Credit applications being delayed
- Getting billed for purchases one did not make
- Credit card charges one does not recognise
- Credit scores going down
The financial impact of Identity Theft
In 2020, there were nearly 1.4 million reports of identity theft, received through the FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov website, about twice as many as in 2019. Of the identity theft reports received in 2020, 406,375 came from people who said their information was misused to apply for a government document or benefit, such as unemployment insurance. That represents a tremendous increase from 2019, when the number was 23,213.
Consumers reported losing more than $3.3 billion to fraud in 2020, up from $1.8 billion in 2019. Nearly $1.2 billion of losses reported last year were due to imposter scams, while online shopping accounted for about $246 million in reported losses from consumers.
The total impact of identity theft, when considering how the government is defrauded, is much higher.
There were nearly 1.4 million reports of identity theft in 2020.
IdentityTheft.gov
Protecting ourselves from identity theft
To protect our personal information from being stolen, we need to follow a well laid out action plan. We need to know how our data is exposed, we should know some of the security basics to make informed decisions and then we have to allocate time and execute our “personal security action plan”. To get started, see our action plan and follow the simple steps.
