List at least eight ways identity thieves can get a victim's personal information.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

1. Stealing wallets and purses containing identification, bank, credit, membership, and other types of cards.
2. Stealing mail, which provides bank and credit statements, pre-approved credit offers, Social Security numbers, and other personal data. Some thieves follow mail carriers at a distance and then steal from mailboxes that appear to have just had a large stack of mail delivered. Alternatively, they might cruise affluent neighborhoods looking for raised red flags on mailboxes and stealing outgoing correspondence.
3. Going to the Post Office and completing a change of address form to divert mail to another location.
4. Rummaging through the victims' trash, or the trash of businesses, to "mine" for personal data-a practice described as dumpster diving.
5. Fraudulently obtaining the victim's credit report by posing as a potential landlord or employer.
6. Stealing personal identification from the victim's home.
7. Opportunistically using information from lost wallets and purses.
8. Family members, relatives, roommates, and acquaintances misappropriating information.
9. Stealing personal data assistants (PDAs) and smartphones, such as Blackberries and iPhones, and laptops and tablets; this area may become more significant in the future, because more than one spyware virus for PDAs and smartphones are known to exist.
10. Obtaining personal information by hacking into home and business computers or by such tactics as downloading spyware programs.
11. Stealing information from employers, medical and insurance offices, student records, and other locations or bribing corrupt employees to provide the victims' personal data.
12. Scamming victims out of personal information on the Internet is done by a technique known as phishing.
13. Shoulder surfing, or watching and listening from a nearby location as victims identify themselves and use credit cards or write checks or are punching in their long-distance calling-card numbers.
14. Using technology, such as skimmers, to obtain personal data. Skimmers are pager-sized data collection devices that cost roughly $300. These are attached to the telephone line running between a business's legitimate card swipe and a telephone jack. During what appears to be a normal transaction, the skimmer reads and stores the data, which is retrieved later by the user. There are also portable skimmers through which waiters and clerks can run victims' cards while they are in the back of the restaurant.
15. Employing card trappers.
16. Picking up discarded computers. From these, thieves recover sensitive files between 33% and 50% of the time.
17. Sending a fraudulent letter and IRS-like form to nonresident aliens who have earned income in the United States. The form is an altered version of IRS Form W-8BEN, "Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding." This form asks for many types of personal information and account numbers and passwords. United States citizens receive a similar phony IRS Form, W-9095, the intent of which is also identity theft.
18. An innovative and novel twist on sending a letter from the IRS, is the new scam-letter from the FBI that informs the recipient that they have been the "victim" of a fraud and that the FBI is investigating their case. The unsuspecting individual is then asked for important personal information on which further fraud and theft scams can be conducted. These letters can be received via e-mail or the postal mail and can be quite elaborate.
19. Calling a home and telling the person that because he or she failed to come to court as required by "the jury duty summons sent to their residence" that the judge is going to issue a bench warrant for his/her arrest. When the panicked recipient of the calls insists no such summons was sent, the "Clerk of the Court" says "perhaps there has been a mistake, let's verify some information" and gets enough personal information to commit identity theft.
20. Offering "debt consolidation" services by phone, promising the unwary that by working with the holders of their credit cards, they can immediately get up to 50% of their debt immediately forgiven, and the one remaining monthly payment "will be less than 20% of the total you are paying now; all I need to get you started right now is your credit card numbers."
21. In yet another scheme, scammers are stealing Social Security numbers assigned to children who do not have bank accounts. The stolen Social Security numbers are then used to develop phony credit profiles, credit cards, bank accounts, and identification. Thieves run up huge debts that will never be paid off. These schemes unfortunately are quite successful and go undetected for long periods of time, until the rightful owner of the Social Security number applies for credit; if that person is a child, it may be years before the scheme is ever detected.