While frequent data breaches may have desensitized some consumers to identity theft, it’s still important to pay attention to early warning signs your info is being used illegally, no matter how creative, silly or transparent a scam may seem.
“For the most part, identity thieves are sophisticated, dogged and damn smart. They take advantage of distraction and trust and look for the slightest crack or crevice to crawl into our lives,” says Adam Levin, chairman and founder of Identity Theft 911, an identity theft services company. ” If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. The potential imaginary opportunity you miss could end up saving you time, stress and money.”
“[Some signs] can be sort of amusing, but they’re all terrifying,” says Marian Merritt, Internet safety advocate for anti-virus software company Norton, since compromised personal information can lead to big financial woes. Norton estimates in 2010 more than 74 million people in the U.S. were victims of some form of cybercrime, leading to $32 billion in direct financial losses.
To help you avoid adding to these losses, here are some early signs your identity has been compromised.
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Your credit card gets declined for an unknown reason.
An expected decline can be one of the first signs an account has been hacked into, says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of network security firm KnowBe4. This is why you shouldn’t be blasé if a retailer says their system isn’t taking your plastic.
Should a card get denied, go home and check your account immediately. If your funds are intact, you may want to call your issuer to see if they can help you get to the bottom of what may have caused the transaction to fail.
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Mystery charges start appearing on your credit or debit card statements.
Strange charges on your credit or debit card account usually mean someone out there is up to no good, but you shouldn’t only be on the lookout for big charges. Crooks who have purchased the number via illegal carder forums will often “test numbers with small purchases,” Merritt says.
This is why you should call your issuer, no matter how big or how small the suspicious charge is. They can help you determine if the purchase is being made illegally or was simply a mistake. For instance, a clerk may have keyed in the wrong account numbers when processing a transaction over the phone or another shopper may have reversed some numbers on the card while shopping online. If the charges are tied to a bigger issue, your credit card company can also help you ensure the fraud remains an isolated incident.
“They’ll walk you through the next steps,” Sjouwerman says.
[Related Article: 5 Reasons to Monitor Your Credit]
Merchandise you didn’t order shows up at your house.
It’s also a bad sign if merchandise you don’t recognize gets delivered to your doorstep, since its sudden appearance could mean someone has gotten access to one of your online shopping accounts. While using the credit card on file, they may have forgotten to change its default shipping address, Merritt says, leading to the unexpected gifts.
If this does happen, call the retailer to arrange to have the merchandise returned. You should also change the password associated with the compromised account and call your credit card issuer to have the card replaced or flagged for future fraudulent activity.
A debt collector calls you for a debt you’ve never heard of.
If a debt collector starts calling to a collect on a debt you’ve never heard of, someone else may be putting your identity to use, Sjouwerman says. This is why, as tempting as it may be, you can’t ignore the calls after initial contact. Instead, find out as much as you can about the purported debt in question so you can determine if it is, in fact, being attributed to you, then take these steps to have it eradicated.
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8 Signs Your Identity Has Been Compromised (cont.) »
Image: B Rosen, via Flickr
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Jeanine Skowronski Personal finance reporter and credit expert, Jeanine's work has been featured by TheStreet, Newsweek, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, MSN, Fox Business, Forbes, CNBC and various other online publications. She has previously served as the managing editor of a small personal finance blog for Xanga.com and an editorial assistant at Maxim Fashion magazine. @JeanineSko
{ 10 comments… add a comment }
thank you for the free info.
First, identity gets stolen because the credit reporting industry is the enabler of identity theft. If you do not place a lock on your reports, those mercenaries will gladly, willy-nilly, sell your information to almost anyone. (The correct and the incorrect information). Many states have laws that allow us to lock our credit reports for our own protection, and can open them temporarily, with a code provided by the credit reporting company. We can’t make the industry issue correct information, but we can stop them from selling what belongs to us without our knowledge. (And, having the credit reporters pay us for what they sell would be nice too….:)
In reference to Dillon’s comment:
http://unixheads.org/2011/04/protecting-your-credit-simple/
your righto’ Dilly Davis, credit reporting bureaus are responsible for enabling identity theft. if each person had to be contacted personally before opening any new account, at a phone number specified on the account or LOCK your credit data, ID theft is not possible. LOCK your damn data people.
Twice I”ve have my identy stolen, once a 15 yo stole it from the Red Cross Mail, while on community service. He would pick up there mail stealing money and idenity from training records. I recieved bills for products he purchased in my name, took a lot of legg work to get it resolved. Twenty years later it happened again, I suspect it was stolen at a car rental agency while on vacation. JC Penny called an said I haden’t paid my bill, only issue was I never have a card with them. I was able to resolve this issue after months. It was a very stressfull time, doing police reports and many phone calling to bring it to a concolusion, too this day its unknow it the thief was caught.
John M
John — would you consider sharing your story in our forum? http://forum.credit.com
Nice article for reminder tips. Please check your credit reports and scores thru the 3 legit credit agencies once a year! It’s so important these days. Here is my story: 1.) Last year, I was hacked with a charge I didn’t make on my credit card statement (got that straightened out and received a new card). 2.) this year, a “representative” (which was a scam, from a company I used to be with), called me for a “special offer”. I wasn’t thinking and gave the person my bank debit card number. Next day, 3 expensive purchases were on my bank statement and my bank called me about them. My bank issued me a new bank card and PIN#. Then I called 1 of the credit agencies and they put a fraud alert on my credit report. So all 3 agencies has the alert on it. Although it was very time consuming, it was worth it! So now I watch EVERYTHING that sounds suspicious. So go with your gut instinct if it doesn’t sound right!
Here we are, looking at a site for the first time, and what does it REQUIRE???
Only SSN, Name, Addr etc. Just the things we are told not to supply.
My idenity thieft protection monders my name(my chacter), my drivers license, my social security number, my medical records, and my finicial information. They send me an email every month and let me know the status of my information. Then I contact them and give them some information and they go to work for me.
The sad thing is identity theft is not new just more covered these days. Over ten years ago, I had a CLOSED bank account hijacked by my ex husband’s girlfriend. We thought we had destroyed everything by burning but missed one checkbook. It was resolved quickly on my end thanks to handwriting comparison but she was a pro and took him for over 50,000 dollars…some of which I think the poor man is still paying off…Sometimes it doesn’t matter how well you lock things down when it’s someone you trust…