Many Victims Complain They Get The Runaround From Credit Bureaus

Category: Finance, Credit.

Identity theft encompasses a variety of crimes, from stealing someone s credit card number to opening accounts in the victim s name. It s relatively common, for someone to, for example give a phony name and Social Security number when arrested or stopped for a traffic violation.

About 15 percent of victims report that their identities were stolen for purposes other than obtaining credit, such as to get government documents, or mislead police, commit tax fraud. Thieves tend to do the most damage when they can take over your identity wholesale. When the bills are due, they don t pay- and those delinquencies, charge- offs, repossessions, collections, evictions, and judgments wind up on your credit report, sending your credit score into the basement. By pretending to be you, they can open up credit card accounts, get an auto loan, be treated at a hospital, or rent an apartment. This kind of" new account" theft costs, on average, $10, 000 per victim and makes up nearly 70 percent of the costs incurred by businesses and financial institutions. The FTC s estimate of the time that consumers spend clearing up problems- 30 hours on average- was decried by many identity theft experts as far too low.

The out- of- pocket expenses for consumers tend to be higher as well- $1, 200 compared to the average$ 500 when all types of identity theft are considered. The Identity Theft Resource Center said that many victims spend 300 to 600 hours dealing with the various problems that identity thieves cause. Many victims complain they get the runaround from credit bureaus. Often, the biggest time- consumer is trying to get fraudulent accounts expunged from credit reports. The bureaus say the problem is lenders, who continue to report account information to the bureaus even after they ve been told the accounts might be fraudulent. Here are just a few of the ways your identity can be stolen: You hand your credit card to a waiter in a restaurant. Either way, the ID theft victim gets squeezed.

Out of your sight, the waiter runs the card through a small, hand- held device called a skimmer. You fill out an application for credit, insurance, an apartment, or employment. All of the relevant information contained on your card s black magnetic strip- including your name and the account number- is stored in the device and can be used to create new cards. A crooked employee sells the information to a ring of identity thieves or uses it herself to open accounts. Thieves pretending to be legitimate lenders- or again, dishonest employees of actual lenders- obtain credit reports from the bureaus and use the information to open new accounts. Hackers break into online databases where your personal financial data is stored.

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