Preventing Identity Theft

559 Words3 Pages

When buying a house, a car, or taking out any kind of loan the bank needs our personally identifiable information to prove that we are who we say we are. If banks never did this anyone could open up a loan in our names and we would be the ones responsible for that loan that was taken out even though we were never the ones who took it out. Every year, millions of Americans lose access to personal accounts and lose assets when they have their identities stolen in what the federal government has called one of the nation’s-fastest growing crimes (Klenowski, 2015). That crime is identity theft and that is what this research paper is going to be about. This paper will discuss the types of identity theft, the techniques of identity theft, the effects …show more content…

Identity theft is a serious problem and can affect your life in a big way. When someone steals another person’s social security number and uses it to open a new line of credit it affects their credit score, when this happens it can tarnish their credit score which in turn can cause problems if they were to apply a loan for a new car or apply for a mortgage on a new house. This type of identity theft is called true name, or cloning. For this type of identity theft offenders mainly try to steal social security numbers so they can open a new line of credit in the victims’ name. Once the offenders have the victims’ social security they can begin to literally take that victims’ full identity(Klenowski, 2015).
Thieves that take over existing accounts get their information in various ways. Some of those way are by eaves dropping on conversations, looking over a victims shoulder as