Hi John,
I am sorry to hear about what has been happening to you. hope this formation helps you. An identity thief will never take over your entire identity all at once, they will take over little bit at a time. They will be looking to build up their catalogue of information on you, so they can gradually take over more and more of your identity. So you need to be careful with all of your personal information, even the small seemingly insignificant pieces.
Identity thieves don’t tend to target a specific individual without a trigger or a door opener into their identity, (like loosing your wallet). With this small bit of information they can start to find out more and more about you. If you are not careful with your personal details you can make it easier for the thief to find out information on you.
When they have enough pieces to build up a solid replica of your identity nothing will happen for a while until the puzzle has been put together. The rest of the details are not taken from your person but from institutions, directories and registers. A thief can call up a bank to find out details. Banks usually have good security, but by calling back a number of times they can gradually gather more and more information. Most security access questions are pretty basic like name, address, date of birth and so on; many thieves can easily get their hands on these details and then be able to access the rest of your register.
Identity theft is probably the only area where poor credit can be a benefit. If a thief steels a person’s identity and then finds out they have bad credit, they most likely won’t pursue that lead any more. If you have a good credit history file you are more likely to be your identity stolen.
Identity-thieves who have enough information about you and are able to access your accounts will usually make a couple of fast frequent withdrawals. They find out when you are least likely to use your account and then extract money from it during this “quite” time, most often this is on the weekend so any investigation will be postponed until the Monday.
Your identity can also be used for non financial issues, such as an office rental agreement where a scam will be carried out, or to carry out illegal shipments under your name. You usually will not find out about these until the police comes knocking at your door.
There are 600,000 cases of identity theft in the UK every year still stealing someone’s identity is not an offence under UK law.
Detecting Identity Theft
Obviously if someone has stolen your identity to take money from your bank accounts you will notice when money is disappearing from your account. To prevent this keep regular track of your bank statements and check your accounts, this will help you control your income/expenditure as well. If you have a credit card, check for small payments as a thief can buy things virtually anywhere with only a few of your details.
If you have a good relationship with your creditors and suddenly they turn their backs on you, be aware that someone might have used your details and have now put you in bad credit.
For non financial uses of your identity such as illegal trading and other practises it is hard to know that it is happening until a criminal act has occurred under your name. To catch the thieves before they commit a crime under your name, try typing your name on to Google or Yahoo and see what results are brought up.
Keep an eye on our mail, thieves can intercept your mail to find out details about you. If you receive bills regularly and suddenly they start arriving late, check with the post office if any redirections that you aren’t aware of. The thieves can also be intercepting your mail right out of your mailbox.
If you have lost your wallet or been victim of burglary, you should be weary for 12 months after. Someone may have stolen some piece of identification which may be trivial to you, but it may be impetrative for the thief to start the whole conundrum rolling.
If you have been a victim of identity theft the recovery process can be distressing and long. You need to act quickly and efficiently to recover your identity.
A few steps you can follow to recover your identity or locate where the theft has taken place are:
-make a list of all the institutions, creditors and other establishments which have your details and you operate with.
-Change passwords on email accounts, or discard email accounts and make new ones
-Set up postal redirection,
-Change telephone banking passwords and questions,
-Set up extra security measures for all your personal identification,
-Make much more regular checks of your accounts and credit files
-get in touch with the fraud office in your local police station and as soon as you detect any identity theft evidence provide them with it. A reported case of identity theft will be easier to prove to your lenders.
-If your case is severe consider a notarised statement to confirm that you are a victim of identity theft.
-Contact the main credit reference agencies and put a temporary fraud alert on your credit file. Whilst this may seem a way to ruin your credit even further it will be a key step to alert lenders to the fact that you are a victim.
If you have reported suspicions of identity theft to the fraud office before your impersonator commits a crime, when the police come knocking on your door with a warrant for your arrest your will have a stronger case to prove your innocence.
A complete identity recovery can take up to two years; in some unfortunate cases the police may need to get involved. However once you start clearing up the mess you should see improvements within 1-2months. As soon as an identity thief knows you have figured out what is going on they usually back down and disappear, and if you change all your details they shouldn’t be able to take up the pursuit again.
Hope this help if you need more information feel free to get in touch.
vera@debt-help-uk.org.uk
