Who are the ID thieves?
Drug addicts – remember the Mail drop box found in the meth house when drug agents busted the occupants for selling Meth- we talked about this on an earlier blog. These addicts were also supporting their drug habit through identity theft. That is why they had preyed the mail drop box off of its foundation where it had been bolted to the concrete sidewalk. They were trying to obtain information from outgoing mail – bill payments, letters containing account information, checks sent, pre-approved credit card offer replies, catalog mail orders and the likes.
Organized criminal groups are becoming perpetrators of identity theft- they are becoming better at developing more creative and believable scams and more effective ways to steal your information and access your financial accounts or your credit. Don’t get blamed if you have bad credit and they target you making your credit even worse – If you have less that stellar credit, even facing bankruptcy, you especially must pay attention to what you need to do to protect yourself.
Your nephew, grandchild, sibling, parent
Unfortunately an increasing number of identity theft victims are finding out that a friend, coworker or family member has stolen and used their information. How can this be, you ask? Unfortunately many thieves (and even some victims – after they recover and have enough time to forget how painful that recovery was- )think that ID theft is a victimless crime. They think that only the credit companies and banks or insurance companies pay the price for identity theft. On the contrary the victim always pays the biggest price. And in many cases we all pay the price
Bank – victims don’t get money back
Credit cards, mortgage - costs go up to all of us
In fact our national economy loses approximately $50 to $200 million every year to identity theft – not enough to solve world hunger or make world peace but definitely could be a shot in the arm to our economy almost any year.
What can you do to protect yourself from these criminals.
Protect your SSN, your bank account and other financial information, credit and other credit information and protecting other types of information that they can also use to commit medical, insurance, and government assistance or tax fraud.
We will look at each of these areas and specific steps you can take to protect yourself from ID thieves. Then we will also look at the keys to stream lining your recovery if you are already a victim of ID theft over the next few weeks! Visit us here each week where we analyze the problem of identity theft and help find solutions for everyone.
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