What Is Offline Identity Theft?
Contrary to popular belief, personal online access accounts for only 11% of the ways in which identity theft occurs.
There are several ways thieves can steal your identity offline, including:
In urban areas, crooks dig through your trash looking for financial documents and papers that include sensitive information. Thieves can use the booty they find through mailbox raiding or dumpster diving to change your address and divert your billing statements in an effort to conceal the fact that your identity has been stolen.
Wallet and checkbook theft may be the oldest trick in the book, but that’s because it works. Many individuals carry around not only their driver’s license, but also their Social Security card, credit cards and automated teller machine (ATM) cards, giving thieves all the information they need to impersonate their victims.
We tend to leave our bills and sensitive documents lying around the house and forget that family, visitors, at-home employees and contractors can then easily access this information.
A criminal can also easily change your address and redirect your mail to a different address in order to steal your confidential information or take over your banking or credit card accounts.
Criminals can get access to your PIN or password by simply watching over your shoulder as you are using an ATM or typing on your computer. Or they could be listening as you provide your credit card number or identification information over the phone to a legitimate vendor. Either way, they now have your data in hand and can commit serious crimes.
Vishing and smishing are the same as phishing, except that vishing is done by telephone and smishing is done by text message, although both often include an email component. In a vishing attempt, scammers may call you pretending to be from your bank to inform you that they have noticed some suspicious activity on your account. They would then ask you to “verify” account details over the phone. In a smishing attempt, a scammer may send a link to a malicious website or a phone number that has an automated voice response system (a type of vishing) that asks for your personal information.
When you insert your ATM card into a compromised machine or run your credit card through a phony card reader, you could become a victim of skimming. Skimming is where a hacker illegally obtains information from the magnetic strip on the back of your credit or ATM card. This information can then be used to access your accounts or produce a fake credit card with your name and details on it.
Corporations of all sizes, whether they are healthcare providers, insurance companies or online businesses, store a large amount of sensitive customer information. If this information is hacked or leaked, your personal and financial details may be exposed.
Theft Statistics
Learn MoreDid you know that over 11 million Americans were the victims of identity theft last year?
