Frequently Asked Credit Questions about Identity Theft

How Does My Identity Get Stolen?

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

The ways in which they do this are numerous, but some of the more popular that they use are listed here for you:

Finding and removing personal information from dustbins.

Stealing personal documents during burglaries and other crimes.

Taking your mail from your mailbox or letterbox.

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

Using a dead person’s birth certificate or other of their personal details.

Getting post and mail redirected to a different address so they get your letters instead.

Stealing your credit card details from credit card receipts.

Today many identity thieves operate as part of large and organized criminal gangs who deliberately target personal identity information.

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.

So Who Can Tell Me If My Personal ID Has Been Stolen?

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

Hopefully it will be before any real damage has been done.

Each entry in the list below could be considered an indicator that your identity has been stolen:

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.

Your bank account statement lists items you never bought.

Unusual credit card transaction cause your credit card company to call you.

So you should always pay careful attention to both your bank and credit card statements and everything your receive through the mail which is a little different from normal.

Unfortunately some people just do not pay attention to these things and before they know it they are in trouble.

Trying to sort out the issues after identity fraud has occurred can be very difficult and take along time to resolve.

The best advice is to not let it happen in the first place!

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.