A Guide to Understand How Identity Theft Works

Imagine if all the efforts that you put in sweating it out during work hours to generate an income for your family and yourself go waste? Yes, you, like many other people, have the chance of being a victim of identity theft. Without even a whisker the next thing you know is that your bank balance is zero or you have received absurdly high credit card bills.

The outcome of identity theft can lead to the unauthorized usage of your name, address and banking information to commit crimes that could potentially put you behind bars for years. In such cases, the best choice is to hire an Identity Theft Attorney in Georgia. 

Identity theft can be performed in dozens of ways. It can easily be done on social media, via disposed of bank statements, scavenging someone’s garbage can for some relevant information, financial breaches, stealing a wallet or phone, etc. One must beware of such crimes as there are people who base their career and daily bread on massive identity theft scams that they pull off via subtle attacks. Below you can read about a few common ways that identity theft can take place – 

Loopholes in your Online Services 

In this modern age, people have all their personal and private information stored on their digital devices. Experienced coders and hackers can easily access these devices by sending a single photo or text message to you. If you even click on it, BOOM – they have access to all your information that you thought could only be viewed via your laptop or phone!

• Phishing – The potential identity thief can claim to be a serviceman providing you with some kind of IT, administration, household or electronic services and easily plant a gateway to your devices.
  
• HTTP and HTTPS – You may often see these abbreviations in your search engine bars. Though it may seem irrelevant, at least opt to always check for the ‘S’ as it stands for ‘secure’. While making payments for food, accessories, tickets, or any other online service, you must ensure that the webpage address begins with HTTPS and not simply HTTP. This assures you that you are paying via a secure link.
  
• Doxing – This more of a digital threat. An individual can be threatened to perform some action or do some crime. If not followed, the thief will leak personal information online that can be utilized by other people on the world wide web.

Global-Level Database Leaks 

This is the most fatal and impactful manner of performing identity theft. If a criminal manages to get access to Amazon or any other service provider database that has a global clientele, then it can be considered as doomsday for most of its users. Think about what not can a criminal do if he/she gets to access the millions of customer names, addresses, credit, and debit card information, government IDs, type and frequency of orders. With such a massive amount of data at the disposal of a criminal, properties can be purchased, investments can be made, and loans can be registered without the consent of the original owner. 

The only solution in these cases is to look for a Fraud Defense Attorney in Cobb County and leave matters in their hands. These attorneys can claim for fraud and help you evade the financial and professional damages that you could face. 

Access to Paper Documents

The worries of having your online data safe are one story. Then comes the part when you also have to keep your printed and original documents safe. Losing something as basic as your wallet can lead to the exposure of your SSN (Social Security Number) and other government-issued ID cards. When this gets in the hands of an identity theft crime, then you need to immediately report to a reputable identity theft defence attorney and let him take care of the proceedings.

The wallet is one way of giving out documents, and there are several more modes that identity thieves choose to tap into –

• Post box – You may have important letters from banks, insurance agencies, the government or even a family member who is intending to send you confidential information. An open mailbox is like a gift for criminals who extract vital information from these documents and lay the biggest of scams. Hire an Identity Theft Attorney in Georgia to handle such situations.
• Garbage – Shredding all paperwork that you are done with can prove to save you from future embarrassment or unauthorized access to your assets. If you simply throw your tax-related documents, company revenue charts, cancelled cheques, etc. and a criminal gets ahold of it, and you could literally have your company shut down due to chance of illegal activities arising.

Read more – IDENTITY DOCUMENT VERIFICATION

Credit Card Fraud

This is the most commonly adopted method to perform identity theft. When you make payments by swiping your card, your receipt would consist of your signature and your card number. If you forget to take this receipt with you, then it can easily get into the wrong hands of somebody, and they could perform illegal activities with your card with utter ease. Your credit card contact number can be changed and the criminal can endlessly make purchases. By the time you find out (in your statements), it would have been an entire month of unauthorized expenditures.

Literally, a full name, address, social security number and date of birth details are enough for banks to allocate loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That too over a phone call! The whole hassle of applying for a fraud case, investigating the crime, visiting the bank several times, hiring a lawyer and changing all your information on other financial domains can be time-consuming. An identity theft lawyer can ensure you will get your assets back, but you would yet have to invest a considerable amount of time and money in the whole process.

Identity theft is a serious matter, and all such cases must be managed by a reputed lawyer. You never know, if you do get stuck in such traps, the lawyer can help recover all your lost assets, maybe even with a cherry on the top.