Protecting Your Mail From Identity Theft
Your mailbox holds a wealth of information for the identity theft as a thief can access it periodically if it is not protected. There are sources of personal information there that an identity thief will want to get their hands on. In addition, an energetic thief can fill out a change of address form at the post office and get your mail sent to a new address where it is readily available to him. Mail theft is a growing concern throughout the country and if you use a non-locking mailbox to either send or receive mail, you are at risk.
Bill payment checks can be stolen, altered and then cashed. The identity theft victim is unaware of the theft until either the bill payment is late or checks start bouncing on his or her account because the check was altered for a higher dollar amount. Often, the identity thief uses a second victim's account number (obtained from a stolen bank statement) to negotiate the altered check, thus creating two victims with one crime. To magnify the problem, identity theft criminals can create additional checks using an inexpensive computer program that can be purchased at any office supply store.
Having boxes of checks delivered to a non-locking mailbox opens the door for an even larger problem. Families' credit records have been destroyed in a very short period of time using a stolen box of checks. The victims eventually get their money back, but the cost and time of cleaning up the damaged credit can e devastating. It can take years to repair the damage done by identity theft. To make matters worse, the identity thief often shares the stolen checks with cohorts or trades the blank check books for drugs. As a result, it is not unusual to see stolen checks circulated over a large geographical area.
Thus, your mail, regardless of incoming or outgoing, is a source of valuable information to an identity thief. It is important to protect it physically and to monitor the mail you receive carefully to spot items that should be there and are not.
For more information on effective ways to prevent identity theft fraud cases, reporting credit card identity theft cases or online identity theft shield protection, please visit the following website: Identity Theft Resource Guide
Related Tags: identity theft, identity theft help, identity theft lawyers, identity theft prevention
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