By: Tony Francis
Submitted: 2009-12-16 13:55:23 | Word Count: 511
Identity theft is a type of fraud where an individual or group wrongfully takes and uses another individual personal data for use in a fraudulent or deceptive way. Unlike a person s DNA or fingerprints, personal data is easily obtained and copied through fraud and deception and they can lead to criminals seeking them from economic gain.
The theft of personal information itself in identity theft use a multitude of techniques designed to confuse the victim. A lot of people do not have a clue on how easily their personal data can be stolen. One recorded way criminals do this is by looking over the shoulder or to the side of a person entering critical personal information such as a credit card number or pin code, and listen in or eavesdrop when they are dictating the calling card numbers and codes which they then use for credit identity theft.
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These criminals can even attack you when you are at your office or at home. Some employ identity theft tactics like sorting through your trash to look for personal information in old mail or documents you have thrown out. Some can intercept your mail and so you do not even receive them. Others even redirect your mail in order to intercept all of the information from your banks or utility companies.
Identity theft is also a rampant crime on the internet. From spam mail, unsolicited electronic mail that are sent in large groups to a large amounts of people in order to get a single reply to mine personal information, to fraudulent websites, internet criminals use all and every means in their disposal to get to your personal information. Phishing, a technique where a fraudulent website which looks like a legitimate website is used to get a potential victim s personal information, is a common technique criminals use today.
With enough personal data and identifying information a criminal may do a lot of criminal activities through your identity. They can take out loans and get credit cards through false applications and credentials. They can withdraw from your bank accounts, and use everything from telephone cards to credit cards to purchase thousands of dollars worth of goods until the cards themselves reach their limits. This is called credit identity theft Most of the time these criminals also take great length to conceal their activities to the victim by avoiding any type of notification system. This is done by placing false contact information and addresses.
It is very hard to correct the falsehoods that these criminals have committed through your identity. Identity theft has left thousands of victims with the hard task of recovering their identities and correcting the mistakes. It is truly unfortunate that it sometimes takes longer for the victim to recover from the damages than for the criminal to commit the crime.
Therefore, in the case of identity theft prevention is the best kind of citizen response. By using identity theft check systems and other anti fraud techniques, we can help ourselves and each other defeat the rampage of identity theft.
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This article has been provided by http://www.free-credit-reports.com, where you can compare credit report and identity theft protection services with this comprehensive chart of all credit report and credit score service providers.
