Identity Fraud On The Increase In UK

1 in 4 people have either been a victimof it or know someone who has been.

Ok, so FOAF stories make news now?

Hehe :-)

Well, I certainly shred anything that has even a hint of personal information on and I think that's a reasonable precaution but I must say that I am not aware that anybody I know (or FOAF/ FOAFOAF etc.) has been a victim of identity fraud.

Just lucky? Or is this article scaremongering?

Me neither.

Daytona

Me neither, so the next person to read this thread must be the one!

Jerry

I don't really understand this, surely much of the information is easily obtained anyway without having to fish around in your waste bin looking for discarded bank statements.

bank statements/utility bills etc are used for ID

Peter

"Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think it's Colin."

He's not your brother. He had his identity stolen in the womb, by a Mrs. Mogambu, who's the wife of an ex foreign minister in Uganda, and she needs your help...

FoFP

Scaremongering. After all if we're all chipped or tatooed with our ID then id fraud stops. Well apart from the real nutters who'd cut your flesh up to get what they want.

Just in time:

"Confidential personal banking security details are said to have been accessed, leading to identity theft, credit and loan requests and balance transfers."

[...]

"A survey of 975 people by Which? magazine has found that seven out of

10 favoured compulsory ID cards as a way to fight fraud."

Surely, ID cards can prevent "confidential personal banking security details" from being accessed. Or the said details will be accessed in identifiable manner.

Vadim

At 15:01:41 on 03/03/2005, Jeremy Goff delighted uk.finance by announcing:

I'm sure using a cloned credit card would be counted as "identity fraud" for such scare mongering stories, and I know loads of people who've had that

Jim.

Survey: Would you prefer an ID card or being ripped off easily by someone stealing your gas bill?

Happened to my sister. She moved house, chavs moved in - some post must have been delivered in her name at her old address (as obviously it will), chavs found out her name and used that to obtain items from a catalogue.

... and how difficult is it to print a very good facsimile of such a statement using a cheap inkjet printer?

Give me your name and address (obtainable just about anywhere) and I can produce lots of perfectly good ID from banks, utilities or whatever for 3 or 4p a sheet.

Very true, but the average ID thieving scallie probably doesn't have very good computer and Photoshop skills.

Alternatively there are sites online selling fake documents.

I guess the other advantage of using real documents would be that any reference/account numbers would be correct if anyone called to check its validity.

Peter

You don't need anything as sophisticated as that. Just print something pretty with "Ruritanian Electricity Company" across the top and the required name and address for the customer. With the large number of 'utility' companies out there there's no way that someone checking will know about all of them.

Come to that I have a small Ltd. company, if I start selling telephone accounts of some sort I can produce suitable bills which originate from a real company.

Probably by just the means I'm suggesting! :-)

Well, as I suggested, the ID thief only has to put their own phone number on the fake ID as the utility company phone number and they can confirm it's valid.

wrote

They don't need to - they can simply enter the company registration number (shown on the bill) into Companies House Search to see if the company is valid. But that wouldn't stop a fraudster pretending to be a valid company (just show if they made a company name up, as you suggested).