ID fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and are starting to use other avenues to steal from consumers. There has been an increasing amount of mobile phone fraud, current account hijacking, and car leasing and cloned car number plate fraud throughout Britain.
Credit card and loan frauds are now the most popular forms of ID theft, where fraudsters gain information from one person to carry out as many fraudulent activities as they can before the fraud is discovered.
The fraudsters create credit card accounts and run up huge bills which will never be paid. They take out personal loans which get defaulted on, leaving the victim with a bad credit rating.
The average amount an individual is defrauded is currently £6,000. Many consumers are not aware that identity fraud has taken place in a number of different ways and are still not protecting themselves and practicing good methods of identity protection.
Most consumers do not know what to look out for to discover whether they have fallen victim of an identity theft crime.
Identity theft can happen in a number of different ways and only just a few personal details are needed to commit a crime.
Often these personal details can be obtained through phone calls, phising, mail interception and other methods. The personal information gained through the methods can then be used for fraudulent purposes such as account takeovers as well as taking out mobile phone contracts.
Over the last year there has been over a 300% increase in the number of serious fraud cases. Fraudulent cases that included the take over of a current account were up by 24% in the first three months of this year with mobile phone contract crime up by 22%.
No comments:
Post a Comment