Beware Of Different Identity Theft Types


by Zackery Lim - Date: 2007-05-08 - Word Count: 511 Share This!

Identity theft has four types: financial, criminal, cloning and commercial. Each type of identity theft is described below.

Financial Identity Theft
The most common form of identity theft is financial. A person stealing your credit card details can get you into a huge amount of financial debt. High charges may incur on your telephone bill if the identity thief gains access to your telephone calling card or your account. The bolder the identity thief is, the more damages he can cause. An identity thief could take out loans in your name, receive a new credit card under your name, create a utility account, lease a car or even lease an apartment under your name.

In severe cases of financial identity theft, you may find that the identity thief has even taken out a mortgage on your home and disappeared with the money. On rare occasions, an identity thief has been known to put his victim's home on the market. Although the task is more difficult, sales have been made in real life.

Criminal Identity Theft
Some identity thieves who steal identities for the sole purpose of using it for plotting and carrying out criminal activities. Traffic violations are the most common type of criminal activities committed by identity thieves. It is possible that an identity thief may carry a false driver's license with your name on it and bearing his photograph.

There is no way of knowing until you receive your first citation for not appearing to respond to a traffic violation charge. Another criminal activity that an identity thief might engage in is using your license plate when they fuel up and drive off gas service stations without paying. Because it's your plate number that shows on security cameras, you end up as the likely suspect. There can be even more serious criminal activities displayed where your identity is used to cover up crimes.

Cloning Identity Theft
In some cases, criminals will steal an individual's identity in order to get a
passport, driver's license or access data when they are blocked from doing so with their own identity. It is possible that an identity thief may even steal another person's identity so that he can start a new life, perhaps due to a criminal past that he has yet to answer for. In these circumstances, you may not even incur any financial losses, but the experience can leave your reputation tattered. You may not even know that you have been "cloned" until you find out that your credit report has been damaged.

Commercial Identity Theft
Businesses are not without risks; they can find themselves deep in problems having to do with identity theft. Landlords face potential difficulties if, for instance, a tenant poses as the owner and sells the landlord's furniture. Data or protected premises may be accessed by falsely using an authorized individual's identity. An identity thief may also pose as an associate to a business and make purchases, transactions or waive contracts, which could highly damage a company. In most cases, by the time the identity theft is discovered, the perpetrator has disappeared.

Related Tags: identity theft protection, identity theft prevention

Zackery Lim has seen first hand how serious identity fraud can be. He now runs an identity theft protection website and guards his private information jealously. You too can pick up some useful free tips at IdentityTheftProof.com and learn how to protect yourself.

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