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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Identity theft

Do you know that it is not a advisable to leave your mail in your mailbox overnight or on weekends? Do you know that you need to tear up unwanted documents that contain personal information, e.g. credit card statements, bank statements, etc.

Identity theft is a kind of crime without a scene.

First, we would discuss on bank identity theft. There are 1.4 million fraudulent cheques written every day in the United States. Cheque books are stolen and used by thieves. Cheques can also be altered by washing away names of payee and amount and rewrite them. It is easy to steal cheques. Lots of people pay their utility and credit card bills using cheques. ID thieves just have to steal those mails and take away the cheques.

Alternatively, criminals could also print their own checks as this poses fewer risks. In order to print cheques, first they need real account numbers. They could get it by stolen mails or by a tactic called ‘shoulder-surfing’. Shoulder-surfing means standing casually behind an ATM machine customer, close enough to read an account number or a deposit number. Another method is simply retrieving a discarded receipt from the bank after a deposit or withdrawal is made.

In several important ways, identity thieves depend on the mail as a means of acquiring new victims. Many crooks steal other people’s outgoing mail, targeting mail that appears to be a bill payment containing a cheque. Mail theft is a dangerous problem, and is considered the single most common method of stealing another person’s identity.

Source: Stewart, Gail B. 2007. Identity theft. Thomson Gale, MI, USA.

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