Unfortunately, in any society, there are those individuals who prey on law-abiding citizens and try to take from those individuals various types of things that are not theirs. Specifically this is called stealing or robbery and can reveal itself in many ways. Some of those ways include the thieves breaking and entering into another person’s home and stealing items that don’t belong to them, stealing a vehicle, holding a person at bay with a weapon and demanding their valuables, etc.
Additionally, because of the advent of the information age, there is another focus of thievery. This theft is known as identity theft. Therefore, it is important to know what identity theft is and if the victim, how to report suspected identity theft.
Quite literally, identity theft is the stealing of an individual’s personal and financial information with the sole purpose of making money off of this act of thievery. Specifically, the identity thieves may choose to sell the identities of their victims to other individuals so that these individuals can pass themselves off as the identity theft victim.
Or, the thief may just simply choose to utilize another person’s identity to gain access to their various financial accounts. These financial accounts can be through various credit companies or the thief may obtain banking information and be able to access the individual’s banking records.
There are a number of ways that an individual’s identity can be stolen. One of the specific ways that this can occur is if the victim responds to an e-mail that is sent by a thief who misrepresents themselves and suggests that the e-mail is coming from a financial institution. When the victim responds to the e-mail, they usually click on a link that is embedded in the e-mail which takes them to a false Internet site made to look like the financial institution in question. It is at this point that the e-mail scammer asks for personal information such as a pin number, account number, personal information, etc.
When this occurs, the individual has basically become a victim of identity theft and has compromised not only their financial information but has provided significant personal information that can be utilized by the thief.
If an individual feels that they have been the victim of this process, it is important to report suspected identity theft. The first and foremost action step to take to report suspected identity theft is to contact the three credit bureaus. Those credit bureaus are Equifax, Experience and Trans Union. To report suspected identity theft, the individual files a report with the agency representative and in turn the agency representative will put a credit hold for at least six months on the individual’s credit report. This will prevent any further lines of credit to be taken out under that specific name.
Another important action step to take to report suspected identity theft is to contact the local authorities. Generally, most police departments have a fraudulent claim department. If not, simply talk to an officer and make sure that a police report is filed. In addition, it is important to contact the financial institutions utilized to report suspected identity theft.
Additionally, one’s medical history may have been compromised. Therefore, as part of the concern for an individual is to ensure that medical identity theft does not occur. This can be averted by calling the doctor’s office or insurance company to report suspected identity theft.
