How is identity theft accomplished?

The way identity theft is accomplished is that an identity thief steals enough information about you to enable them to use your identity. This usually means using your identity to obtain money, goods or credit in your name.

The identity thief leaves no trace of his or her true identity; all the evidence points to the victim of the fraud. The victim is faced with the task of convincing debt recovery services, the police etc that the debt in question arose through criminal action by a third party.
Identity theft is easy to accomplish and difficult to detect. The crime often goes undetected for many months and the identity thief could be using stolen documents and credentials anywhere in the world.

To arm yourself with information, you should familiarise yourself with how identity theft is accomplished in each of these 3 common ways identity theft can be carried out:

Card skimming fraud

To accomplish identity theft through skimming fraud, the identity thief steals details of your credit card during a legitimate transaction; you hand over your card to pay for something and the person serving you uses a gadget to copy your card details electronically, or simply writes down the card details. Never let your credit card go out of sight when you are paying for goods or services.

Identity theft as a result of dumpster diving

There are dishonest people who make a living out of stealing personal documents that the owners have thrown away. To avoid identity theft being carried out by this means, you should ensure that every document bearing private details is thoroughly shredded before you throw it out.

Dishonest employees

Sometimes normally trusted companies such as banks or credit card companies will be responsible for leaking private information due to the activities of a dishonest member of staff. There have been cases where call-center employees have stolen details of hundreds of customers from the databases of financial institutions and sold them to identity thieves.

Card skimming fraud and theft of documents through dumpster diving can be avoided. You can prevent identity theft being accomplished by card skimming by exercising vigilance. You can make dumpster diving fruitless by shredding or burning personal documents.

The unlawful activities of dishonest employees are beyond your control. You can, however, mitigate your losses by using a
fraud monitoring service. Early detection of this sort of crime means you can take steps to control the situation before the situation reaches grave proportions.