With the Black Market of Stolen IDs Expanding, Are You Sure You Are Not One of the Victims?

On many occasions there are news items about stealing of millions of identities. The data may be stolen from retailers who are not using encrypted servers. The hackers may log on to their servers without much effort and access all the files of the customers containing numbers of their credit cards and other personal details. This information may be sold in the black market for a good price.

When such type of news breaks, everyone gets worried. How can you ensure that you are not one of the victims of such theft?

Well, there is no way to ensure that you are safe, but you can take some quick and simple actions to prevent damage. Here are some tips -

1. First of all, read the news item carefully to find out the source from where the identities are stolen. If names of the retailers are given, you will be able to find out whether you have dealt with any of them in the past. If you have not bought anything from any of them, you may not be affected by such theft.

2. Unfortunately, if you are shopping with the any of those retailers, it is possible that the thieves might have captured your data. However, they may take months or even years to misuse your information. Before they can do all that, you can start with some easy precautions.

3. Check your bank statements and credit card statements carefully to find out whether all purchases shown there are really made by you. If you are making a lot of purchases, it is a good idea to keep a diary in which you can make a note of all of them. Then you will be easily able to reconcile these entries with the actual statements. If you feel some suspicion, contact immediately your credit card company on your bank and also inform the credit bureaus about such irregular transactions.

4. You should contact your credit card company to find out whether they are providing some extra services in response to the crisis. Many card companies and banks have started a new service under which they notify the customer by a telephone call of any purchase which is not matching with his/her regular spending pattern. Generally no fee is charged for these services.

5. You should then contact all three credit reporting bureaus to request them a fraud alert which will be placed on your credit report. That means, if anyone tries to create a new credit in your name, you will be informed before the credit is provided. Many identity thieves may not use the stolen credit card details for making immediate purchases but they may try to open a new account in the name of that person for taking out large sums of money. A fraud alert will put a brake to all these malpractices.
Once identities are stolen in such wholesale fashion, there is nothing much for the people to do. The problem is with the retailers from where the information is stolen.

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act is in operation now and it will deal with the problem of retailers who are neglecting the safety of their system. Under this Act, these retailers will be liable for identity thefts due to inadequate security of their systems.

You cannot do much about security measurements of these retailers, but you can certainly protect your finance and your ID by using above strategies.