Why is Identity Theft SO easy? They should change the system, because now it is WIDE open to abuse

Question

In theory, how easy is it for someone to change their name to Joe Bloggs

Proof of ID

- The Gold standard is obviously the UK passport.

If someone changed their name, they could go to the UK passport office, with a deedpoll document & get a new passport in about 4 hours (at an approx. £96 charge)

Proof of address

You can just go to any property, call the local gas/electricity company /BT & say "I'm Joe Bloggs, moving in next week". You'll get utlitiy bills immediately (the next day?)

You could even put the name on the voters roll (when they come round ever year around September

The above are legal & people do it all the time

Except it is so so so easy, dishonest people use it for identity fraud. They can just choose YOUR name, legally change THEIR name to YOUR name & steal your identity..

They can open a bank account (as YOU) and get a loan for *hundreds of thousands of pounds*

The banks are so irresponsible!! They just care about nice big profits (at YOUR expense & your misery)

Aaron Borbora · Accepted Answer

They can open a bank account (as YOU) and get a loan for *hundreds of thousands of pounds*

The banks are so irresponsible!! They just care about nice big profits (at YOUR expense & your misery)

How is it increasing their profits? You aren't going to pay them the money back and neither is the fraudster.

Van Helsing · Answer

Its about making it easy for honest people to take out loans without having to provide references/guarantors etc. thereby increasing their potential customer base.

They will keep making it easy to borrow money until the losses they make from fraud exceed the profits they make from a larger client base.

VH.

henryl · Answer

(very well put) They can 'afford' it - the money they lose through fraud is only a tiny drop in the ocean (compared to their profits)

In contrast, the victim of identity fraud is blacklisted and it can mess up their entire life

It happened to a girl & she was hounded by debt collectors

Lucky for her she is a journalist of a financial newspaper so she got it sorted out eventually

She actually tried to ring up the company who would refuse to divulge information on the account (they asked for the 'security question' the applicant of the loan set up.. but ofcourse the applicant was the fraudster so she had *NO idea* what it was)

I think she worked for the financial times or something, so she got a result

Just think of the misery

Richard Oliver · Answer

The above is true - but you would need to hand in your existing passport if one existed. This means your identity using the gold standard shifts

- but you don't get an extra identity.

OK, you can claim your passport was stolen etc. prior to the name change but that may ring a few alarm bells.

I had to produce two passports (members of my family) to get local authority services set up earlier today - the passports were briefly looked at. I would imagine that most people checking passports at banks etc. would not be trained to spot a fake (or the equipment they use to check wasn't good enough).

Why is Identity Theft SO easy? They should change the system, because now it is WIDE open to abuse

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