Identity Theft Impact

While a lot of identity theft is through the Internet and affect those who shop or do financial business online, there are still over half of identity theft U.S. residents being victimized by those that they know or have some sort or ongoing relationship with. The thieves could be members of the victim's family, housemates, roommates, coworkers, neighbors and alleged friends. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the affect of identity theft is felt just as often off the Internet as on.

The affect of identity Internet theft, or any identity theft is pervasive, hard to counteract and often devastating.

In identity theft, the perpetrator takes over the identity of a victim by stealing her or his private information - things of a critical nature such as driver's license, social security number, bank account number, or the number of her or his credit cards. How this identity theft, Internet or otherwise has an affect on the victim is to potentially see the ruination of credit as the thief illegally obtains loans that he or she fails to pay or opening credit card or merchant accounts that once again he or she fails to pay. To keep this identity theft fraud going as long as possible the thief also changes the billing addresses for these accounts so the victim is unaware of the unauthorized transactions as long as possible.

What these identity Internet and other thieves often do to affect this address change is to put in a phone change of address at the post office.

To counterbalance the affect of Internet identity theft, or to head it off before it even happens, it's first and foremost important that you give out your social security number sparingly, never record your debit or ATM card pin numbers, shred all important documents before you dispose of them, and at least once a year ask for and carefully study your credit report. You should order and review the reports from all three major credit reporting bureaus - TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.

Source:

http://www.gartner.com/5_about/press_releases/pr21july2003a.jsp

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