Types of Identity Theft Identified

Identity theft is a serious problem in the United States. What makes it so serious is the way the crime is carried out. Most people don’t know they’ve been victimized for months after their identity has been stolen and used for nefarious purposes. Many people believe that identity theft is a crime that typically only happens in one of two ways; someone steals your social security number and address and opens a credit card through your account and goes on a spending spree, or an illegal immigrant takes your identity to find work in the country. But there are other ways that identity theft is realized for criminals. Identifying and knowing about these other methods of identity theft can help you prepare to defend yourself against them.

Type 1: Identity Cloning

Identity cloning is usually fairly hard to detect because it may not leave any traces on your credit score, which is the primary way of realizing that one’s identity has been stolen. With identity cloning, a person actually assumes someone else’s identity for the purpose of evading the authorities, or for finding work as in the case of an illegal immigrant. In either case, the thief is rarely out opening credit accounts in your name and racking up huge debt. In fact, if an illegal steals your identity, they may simply be working under your social security number and paying taxes into the social security administration on your behalf.

Type 2: Financial Identity Theft

Financial identity theft is probably the most common type and is a malicious crime where someone steals your identity for financial gain. With financial identity theft, your social security number and identifying information is obtained by a thief and used to open accounts in your name and go on a shopping spree. While store cameras and tracking systems make this kind of theft seem brazen and hard to get away with, the careful thief can pull this off for years by using various accounts from different victims sparingly and keeping an eye on theft indicators, then abandoning its use. Victims of this crime often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and a good deal of their personal time dealing with banks, creditors and law enforcement agencies trying to clear their name.

Type 3: Criminal Identity Theft

Criminal identity theft can be the scariest type for the victim. Imagine yourself being pulled over for an ordinary traffic violation. You hand the officer your license and he returns telling you that its been suspended and a warrant has been issued for your arrest for failing to appear in court months ago. The officer arrests you and charges you with crimes you didn’t commit and takes you to jail. What just happened here?

Criminal identity theft is where a criminal presents to an officer a stolen identity if they commit a crime and are arrested. They are then booked into jail and get released on bail but fail to show up at the appointed time. They are now free to go live their lives (usually as someone else), and the victim whose identity was stolen will be the one to pay the price for their actions in the future. This type of identity theft is usually cleared up by the fingerprint records, the mug shot, and/or by contacting the original arresting officer, if possible, for visual identification. Further work will also be required to have the criminal records expunged and possibly contacting various data reporting agencies who might have you down as a criminal in their records if someone requests a background check on you.

Type 4: Synthetic Identity Theft

Synthetic Identity Theft is where an entirely new identity is possibly created using a combination of stolen or made up information such as a social security number from one person, and a name and address from another person. Usually the way this theft is pulled off makes it difficult to track or discover, since it doesn’t often affect a victim’s credit report and/or is easily contested and cleared since the matching information is invalid.

Type 5: Medical Identity Theft

Medical identity theft is where a thief gives the wrong information to a hospital emergency room or doctor in order to receive treatment for injury or illness for free. This type of theft can result in false information appearing in your medical record and you being asked to pay for medical care you did not receive.

With advancing technology and credit-guard services, it is becoming easier and easier to protect one’s self from identity theft and to find and prosecute the criminals who engage in this type of behavior.