Save Yourself from ID Theft

ID theft or identity theft is the act of an individual pretending to be someone else and steal money or enjoy benefits. People may use your identity to perform criminal activities and you will be arrested for that.

Identity thieves use several techniques to obtain information about an individual. Few of these methods are:

• Learning about the individual by going through government registers and public records.
• Stealing personal mails
• Reading thrown away bills
• Advertising fake job offers and gathering information about the individual from curriculum vitae
• Calling up as telemarketers and obtaining personal details
• Surfing social networking sites
• Infiltrating databases that store personal information

Identity thefts can lead to financial fraudulent activities and criminal activities. Financial frauds include credit card fraud, bank fraud, tax refund fraud, telemarketing fraud and many other such crimes. Financial identity theft is the most frequently occurring fraud among all. Criminal activities that are performed with the aid of an identity theft include entering a country, procuring special permits and committing acts of terrorism.

The crimes that may be committed by an identity thief are:

• Utilities fraud where the thief may create a new phone account in your name and use it at your expense
• Bank and credit card fraud
• Government documents fraud where the thief may be able to obtain a driver’s license or any ID card using your name but someone else’s photo
• Job fraud where the thief may get employed using your social security number

ID Theft

If you feel you are a victim of ID theft, you must place a fraud alert on all your credit reports and review them. The alerts can help stop the thief from creating more accounts in your name. You may contact the consumer reporting companies and alert them about the theft.

If you know about any account in your name that has been opened fraudulently, you may close them down immediately. You may also change the passwords and personal identification numbers of the accounts.

You may also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. You may either call their toll free number at 1 877 438 4338 or write to the Identity Theft Clearinghouse at the following address:

Federal Trade Commission

Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580

A fraud alert stops the thief from opening accounts in your name and using your credit card. However, it does not stop all kinds of criminal activities. You may also file a report with the local police. You may use credit card bills with the signature of the thief to prove that it is not your own signature and that you have been a victim of identity theft.

You may obtain an identity theft report to show to the credit reporting companies in order to prove that you are a victim. An identity report contains details about the fraud that verify that you are the victim. You need to file a report with the local law enforcement agencies to receive an identity theft report.

For more information on ID theft you may visit the official website of FTC by copying the link http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/.