Victims of Identity Theft
People from all walks of life have been the victims of identity theft. You may even know people who have had their identities stolen and who have had to struggle to get their good names and credit ratings back into order. The bottom line is this: everyone is at risk for identity theft.
Similarly, the thieves come from a broad range of backgrounds. In the early days of computerized banking, it took extensive knowledge of the inner workings of computer technology to steal money electronically. Now almost anyone, whether educated or not, can get their mitts on someone else's personal information and start creating identity documents, opening lines of credit, and otherwise destroying other people's lives. The tools are so easy to use that the only skill they really require is the ability to rationalize away the promptings of one's conscience.
When these criminals are caught, it's generally because they aren't really good at it. Many of them learned it from some other convict while in jail for petty offenses like shoplifting. They think it sounds easier than typical street crimes, but when they give it a shot, they discover that it's harder than it looks to do it without leaving a trail that their victims and the cops can follow right to them. Soon they're right back in the big house, and we can only hope that they're not trying to convince other young punks how easy it is to steal by swiping someone else's identity.
Conversely, the real professional criminal identity thieves are very difficult to catch. Many of them are able to cover their trails so well that the victims are lucky to be able to convince banks and other financial institutions that they should not be required to repay loans fraudulently taken out in their names.
How can you know if you have become a victim? Many identity thieves will look for the easiest targets, people who are careless with their personal information and those who don't expect identity theft. This often means elderly people, since they tend to be trusting with their personal information, having grown up and formed their ideas about how the world works in a more innocent time when theft was almost always street crime or burglary.
However, this fact should not lull anyone not in that demographic into a false sense of security. Anybody can fall victim to identity theft, particularly if they are careless about their personal information. Many people fall into the clutches of an identity thief as the result of a simple telephone call. Someone asks them for a contribution for a charity, and without a second thought the mark agrees to give them money over the phone by credit card. Or the caller tells them they've just won a fabulous vacation, but they need to pay some kind of fee by credit card. The next time the unwitting person tries to use that card, it is declined and they discover that somebody has made unauthorized purchases on the account until the bank stopped honoring the card.
The best way to keep this from happening is to make a rule never, ever, to divulge personal information such as bank and credit card numbers to someone who has called you. If you are interested in their service or want to make a charitable donation to their cause, insist that they send you information so that you can research their organization and send any money safely. Reputable companies will always be agreeable to such an arrangement. If they start pressuring you, simply hang up.
Although many credit cards now provide some protection from identity theft, you will still be required to document what purchases on your statement are fraudulent. Although there is an image of identity theft as something that is done for expensive items like big-screen TV's and computers, many fraudulent credit card transactions are for astonishingly small things -- a few gallons of gas here, a case of beer there. The identity thieves count on the complete insignificance of such purchases to keep clerks from questioning them and requiring proper identification.
In any case, you need to inform yourself about identity theft to protect yourself from this rapidly growing form of white-collar crime. Although the statistics may be frightening, it is not a hopeless situation, and ordinary people have successfully foiled identity thieves and helped to bring them to justice.
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