Who exactly steals identity for identity theft?

Question

What exactly happens....who are these thieves, where do they get the information from and how do I protect myself from identity theft?

Answer 1

It can happen in various ways.

One common method of identity theft is simply digging through trash to find discarded information such as credit card offers or unshredded bank reports and similar documents. People may also break into your home and steal your credit cards... Easiest ways to prevent these are to always shred (or at the very least rip up into smaller pieces) valuable reports, receipts, invoices, etc. and always store your credit card/wallet in a place that's easy to find for you, but may not be so easy to find for a thief.

Another method is phishing scams and insecure websites. Phishing is where someone sets up a site that looks identical to a real website that you might use, but it's not... They trick you into sending them your information. An example of this is someone setting up a fake PayPal site and then sending an e-mail saying your account has been frozen until you verify your details... They provide a link that you might click on, which takes you to their site, and then you enter the info and BAM, it's stolen. They can also do "packet sniffers" where they basically snatch info that's being sent between your computer and the website to whom you're sending your info, and they can draw information from that.

To prevent those, ALWAYS be on the lookout for fake looking e-mails and don't believe all the e-mails that are sent to you. If you get an e-mail from paypal saying your account was frozen, manually open your webbrowser, go to paypal, login, and see if what the e-mail is saying is true. Do NOT use any links they provide in the e-mail. Also, only buy from secure sites, the bigname sites like Amazon, Ebay, NewEgg, etc, as these are typically much more secure than some of your smaller sites that specialize in small goods. Though even this isn't 100% secure, as one hacker showed last year... Got into several thousand accounts (my dad was a victim of that, but they froze his bank account and issued a new card so no real damage was done).

And finally, do NOT store personal info on your computer. It's very simple to put something in a word document and then someone gains access and finds it... Then you're done. And you would never know someone got into your computer and found it, either.

Well, those are just some tips I have, I guess. Hopefully that helps a little bit.

Answer 2

Well, what happens is you call the government and the send you a book that is over 200 pages thick and leave you to solve the problem. Oh, and you may have to spend up to 600 hours restoring it. I know many people who have had to do this, so I do know first hand. I actually have identity theft sheild. They monitor my credit, notify me if ANYTHING has hit my credit, and then, they will fix it and I do not have to do any of the work. You cannot protect yourself from having your identity stolen, but you can have the proper things in place, so when it does happen, you will know what to do. Solution: You might want to consider looking at what I have, I can send you the website. Trust me, I feel better knowing that I have this! Let me know and I will send it to you!

Answer 3

there are a lot of ways...all they need is a piece of mail with you address and your social security number and you date of birth. they can get these things as simply as going thru your trash. With these 2 things they can get a birth certificate and with that they can get a social security card and with that they can get a picture id and from there they can get credit cards and a lot of other things in your name.
never throw anything with this information in the trash. always shred it first. also, check you credidt report often and dispute any indecrepencies right away