What Is ID Theft? The Crime Defined…
There are many different definitions of the term ID theft that vary from different sources like dictionaries and Wikipedia. The FTC, or Federal Trade Commission, has a whole section of their site dedicated to the Identity Theft Crime. Here is a snippet off of their site:
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“Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information, like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.”
For more information visit the FTC site Here
The FTC has had to pay more and more attention to the matter of ID theft in the past few years due to the catastrophic rise in numbers of US citizens that have been affected by these crimes. The affects of these criminal actions have been hard to remove for many of the government agencies that monitor these actions. In some cases identity theft victims can be affected for years and have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to recapture their credit and good name.
70% of Identity theft in recent years has been committed online, due to the huge increase in the number of online shoppers and viruses. To learn how to shop online without worry of stolen credit card numbers please read our article:
Prevent ID theft by safely shopping online!
Some Scary Facts About Identity Theft
- The Federal Trade Commison has estimated that over 10 million people in America alone have have had some part of their identities stolen in the past year.
- Theives that attain the right information about you are able to open credit accounts, rent houses or apartments, buy cars, and run up telephone bills on your credit and default on all payments.
- Almost all people that do not have a third party service monitoring their credit will not know that their identity has been stolen until there is considerable debt to deal with.
- ID Theft Sucks To Deal With. Some people will be able to take care of problems quickely, but most have to go through months or years of rebuilding horrible credit records.
- Due to bad credit scores some victims can lose out on job opportunities, or have education, housing, or car loans rejected.
- Some people have been targeted before they are 18 and have horrible credit before they have a chance to ruin it themselves!
Clearly now is the time to be proactive about your Identity and the protection that it deserves. Only you can make sure that you are doing the right things to prevent yourself from becoming a victim. Recently a few companies have created a service that will actively monitor your credit for you to make the process automated for yourself, with many offering up to 1,000,000 dollars of insurance for losses that happened due to ID theft.
We have compiled a list of 4 of these companies that we believe to offer valuable and affordable services:
See the top 4 companies features and pricing side by side here.
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