INDIANAPOLIS — As it turns out, online crooks don’t need to steal your whole identity to commit fraud; they can simply steal a piece of it.
Synthetic Identity Theft is the fastest growing form of ID theft, and according to the Federal Trade Commission, it’s increased by more than 200% in the last five years, accounting for about 85% of all ID theft cases.
It happens when a crook takes information from several different sources to create a new identity. They might take your social security number from a data breach and combine it with the name, address, and phone number of other people to invent a whole new identity. Instead of posing as you, they create a whole new persona to take out loans, make purchases and other things. They often use the leaked information of children in their schemes, taking advantage of the “blank slate” credit score associated with them.
According to Scamicide, these crooks will often spend months, or years building up a good credit score for their fake identity until they can get their hands on a big line of credit to spend.
So how do you know if a piece of your identity is being used for this? Scamicide points out these telltale signs:
- Being contacted about a mystery account you never opened or don’t even know about.
- An alias listed on your credit report that you don’t use.
- A dramatic drop in your credit score, seemingly for no reason.
If you look into this and discover you’re the victim of synthetic ID theft, you should immediately notify the three credit reporting agencies; Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Experian recommends these steps:
- Report it to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You can report identity theft, including a stolen SSN, to the FTC by visiting IdentityTheft.gov and following the prompts. You can also call 877-438-4338 to report it.
- Contact the credit bureaus. You’ll want to notify the three major credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax) that you may have unauthorized accounts. You also have the right to place a fraud alert on your Experian credit report through the fraud alert center or by calling 888-397-3742. Experian will notify the other two bureaus of your fraud alert.
- Notify financial institutions. Contact any financial institutions where the fraud occurred, such as your bank, credit card issuer and insurance companies.
