March 15, 2013
This is not a hyped-up crime nor does it happen rarely. Identity theft is becoming a big time problem. With the internet providing identity thieves with thousands of digital dossiers, thousands of people are also suffering as a result.
Scare tactics won’t get you anywhere but in this case, being afraid is one major thing that can prevent identity theft. To see just how serious the ramifications of identity theft can be, one only needs to look at a worst case scenario resulting from this crime.
A criminal or someone with intent to do illegal activities can easily look up your personal information on the web. It could be from your Facebook profile or any similar sites. One way he can use it is to evade further questioning from the police if they get arrested and freed on bail.
When asked for personal information, the criminal would give the police your name, your social security number, and other personal information needed. This means that this criminal is adding a criminal record into yours when you haven’t done anything wrong.
If you are applying for a job and the company runs a background check on you, that criminal report would show up and more often than not, you would not be considered for the vacancy because of your “criminal record”. Let’s say that you are already with a company when the “record” was placed. A routine background check can make your employers think that you lied to them about having any criminal record.
The reason why this is happening is not only because of people having their personal info available for everyone to see online. Sometimes, police officers not checking the information fed to them by criminals can cause years of suffering for identity theft victims.
Some police officers just take the word of the criminal and file their records according to the information supplied to them. When the criminal is released on bail and then fail to attend court hearings, the court would then issue a warrant of arrest for the identity on their file. This way, criminals are beating the system and it is up to the identity theft victims to prove that they are not the person wanted by the authorities.
Guarding your personal information is your responsibility. That means you need to do your part to help fend off identity thieves.
