Ways Your Identity Can Be Stolen
Here are just a few ways your identity can be stolen.
• You hand your credit card to a waiter in a restaurant. Once out of your site the waiter runs the card through small hand-held device called a skimmer. All of the relevant information contained on our card’s black magnetic strip, including your name and account number, is stored in the device and used to counterfeit new cards.
• You fill out an application for credit, an apartment, insurance or employment. An employee sells your information to a ring of identity thieves or uses it himself to open accounts.
• You do the above but the application ends up in the trash where identity thieves pilfer it.
• Hackers break into online databases where your personal financial data is stored and steal it.
• Thieves pretending to be legitimate lenders or dishonest employees of actual lenders obtain credit reports from the bureaus and use the information to open new credit accounts.
You will probably notice that all of these crimes have one thing in common. There is precious little you can do to prevent them.