An Important Overview Of The Identity Thief

An identity thief is a person who engages in stealing a person's identity. Identity theft is now a growing crime and a convenient one for identity thieves because apprehension of these thieves is seldom. This is due to the fact that the nature of the crime does not usually involve physical contact of the victim with his perpetrator, so that points of identification of the criminal are close to nothing.

People who engage in identity theft may be terrorists, members of a criminal group, or simple individuals. An identity thief's main purpose is to steal a victim's personal information for his financial gains. Others use it for falsification of criminal records or in obtaining free medical services or government benefits using the victim's name. An identity thief may work in the following ways to obtain the needed information:

- Mail theft - This is usually hard to prevent unless you devise ways at which you will be able to immediately get your mails upon delivery.

- Garbage rummaging - One way to counter this identity theft tactic is by shredding important documents that you place into your trash. Make sure to destroy them in a way that they will no longer be glued together.

- Simple stealing or pickpocket - This is a common practice of identity theft wherein the main item for stealing is the victim's wallet. Usually, we place important information in our wallets that we are not aware of. Aside from our cash, our wallets may contain our Social Security number (SSN), Identification cards that contain personal information and our signature, and our credit cards. Others simply steal by entering houses in search of relevant information.

- Phishing - This is an online method of identity theft wherein emails are made and designed to look like a legitimate email from an established institution to fool the victim and lure him into surrendering his personal information. Distinguishing a phishing email may be hard so, in order to make sure that the email you are receiving is legitimate, call the establishment and inquire on the rationale of them asking your personal information.

- Pretexting - A method where a person obtains your personal information under false pretenses. This may be employed through emails or through the telephone.

- One instance is when a pretexter calls the victim and will claim to be affiliated with a bank or any organization and when he gains the victim's confidence, he asks for his personal information. When the thief already obtained the victim's personal information, he calls a company or any organization, claiming to be the victim and asking for salient information such as bank and credit account numbers.