1 in 5 Australians was identity crime victims last year which cost up to $1.6 billion lost. In the Australian society, there is an extensive concern about identity theft. However, Australians have little knowledge about identity crime. So what is identity theft?
According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Centre, identity theft can be sub-divided into five groups:
- Criminal identity theft
- Financial identity theft
- Identity cloning
- Medical identity theft
- Child identity theft
Criminal Identity theft
Criminal identity theft generally refers to the offender who fraudulently identifies him/herself as another person when arrested for a crime by presenting stolen or fake ID. This leads to charge placing under the victim’s name and let the criminal off the hook. Victims will only know their identity were stolen by chance, for example by receiving a court summon, discovering their drivers licenses are suspended when stopped for a routine traffic stop or through background checks done for employment purposes. Unfortunately, victims can hardly clear the incorrect criminal record. Victims might have to prove their own identities by providing some reliable information, like DNA testing, fingerprinting and going to court. Even though victims might obtain an expungement of court records, data aggregators might still have the incorrect criminal records in their databases, whereby affects victims in the future background check.
Financial identity theft
Financial identity theft is the most common type of identity theft. Financial identity theft occurs when a thief uses stolen personal identity to commit a crime resulting in financial injury to the victim. The stolen information may include names, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and other personal financial data. With this information, thieves can get credits, apply for loans or mortgages and purchase goods and services, claiming under the name of the victims.
Identity cloning
Instead of stealing other’s personal information for financial gain or committing crimes under victim’s name, the identity thief uses other’s information to assume his/her identity in daily life is referred as identity cloning. Criminal comprises victim’s life by actually living and working as the victim. Illegal immigrants, people evading from creditors or other individuals, or those who simply want to become “anonymous” for some reasons may perhaps commit identity cloning.
Medical identity theft
Medical identity theft occurs when a thief uses the victim’s name or health insurance number to see a doctor, get prescription drugs, claim health insurance and get other care. When victim’s health record is mixed with the thief’s health information, it may affect future insurability, cause doctors relying on the misinformation in delivering future medical care and result in extra payment records.
Child identity theft
When a child’s identity is used by another person to apply for government benefits, open bank and credit accounts, apply for a loan or rent a place to live, such crime is identified as child identity theft. The offender could be a family member, a friend or even a stranger targeting on children. Usually, such cases are undetected for years, as most children will only discover the problem when they grow up.
Have you ever encountered any types of identity theft? If yes, don’t be shy and send us your case to areyoutheonlyone1@gmail.com
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ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE? 
I didn’t realise that there’re so many different types of identity thefts.
Thanks for sharing with us. :))
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Great that now you know more about identity theft. But most importantly is to start protecting yourself from identity theft. 🙂
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You did write a good introduction of identity theft. This issue is so important to us. As a young man, I do think people should pay much attention to this issue and learn how to protect themselves from being deceived by the bad criminals. Appreciation is given to you for giving us such a good article. Hope you can give us more information for the issue, or other social issue. I am willing to discuss those social issue as I am quite interested in the problem of our society. Please post more articles and I will keep touch with your blog. Support you !
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Thanks Samuel for your comment and support. Stay tuned, more blogs about identity theft are upcoming. Cheers.
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Good writing! Thank you for your sharing first of all. Seemingly you haven’t provided some advice for us to escape from being conned or to protect us from the thefts. Here is some advices for reference.
1. Do not give out your personal information (e.g. date of birth, address, telephone etc. ) too easily on the internet or social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Otherwise, your personal information will be misused by bad guys one day!
2. Use a shredder to destroy tax related documents after tax time is over and keep the necessary ones in a safe. Some professional thieves will look through the trash to get one’s personal information.
3.For taxpayers planning to e-file their tax returns, it is recommended to use a strong password. Afterwards, save the file to a CD or flash drive and keep it in a secure location. Then delete the personal return information from the computer hard drive.
4.Only use secure websites while making online financial transactions. Some thieves will access information you provide to an unsecured Internet site. This is also a very common way for thieves to steal your information.
Hope we can exchange our ideas towards this topics. If you have any question, please leave a comment and I’m willing to talk to you. Last but not least, this is biscuitbiscuit, a special name given by an important person of me.
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Hi, Biscuitbiscuit. Thanks for your comment. Actually, I planned to blog about tips in preventing us from falling identity theft victims in later blogs. But thanks a lot for the advice. It will definitely be valuable for all the readers. Cheers. 🙂
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