Identity Theft & Fraud Types

Identity theft is sub-divided into five categories by Identity Theft Resource Center:

• Business/commercial identity theft - obtain credit by using different business name
• Criminal identity theft - pretend as a different person when detained for a crime
• Financial identity theft - Obtain goods, services, and credit using another's identity
• Identity cloning - using information of a person in daily life to assume his or her identity
• Medical identity theft - Get medical care or drugs using another's identity

Identity theft may be used to aid other offenses including illegal immigration, terrorism, and espionage. Online credit card processing and medical insurance systems have come under identity cloning attacks. Identity thieves impersonate others for non-financial reasons—for instance, to receive praise or attention for the victim's achievements.

        Financial Identity Theft:

It includes activities like credit card fraud, tax and mail fraud, passing bad checks, and so on. Of course, the identity thief’s objective is to not pay back any of the borrowed money but, instead, to enjoy spending it.

        Criminal Identity Theft:

In this case a criminal deceitfully recognizes himself to police as someone else at the point of arrest. In few instances criminals have already possessed identity documents issued by the state using other person stolen credentials, or have used fake ID to accomplish their goal. Charges may be placed under the victim's name, letting the criminal off the hook. Victims might only learn of such incidents by chance, for instance by learning their driving licenses are hanged up while committing minor traffic disobedience, or by receiving summons from the court, or through background checks performed for employment purposes.

For the victim, clearance of criminal identity theft record can be very complex. The procedure to clear the victim's wrong criminal record depends on what jurisdiction the crime took place and whether the true identity of the criminal can be determined. The victim might need to locate the original arresting officers and prove their own identity by some trustworthy resource such as Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or finger printing, and may require attending court hearing to clear from the charges. Authorities might permanently maintain the victim's name as an alias for the criminal's true identity in their criminal records databases. The victims of criminal identity theft may face a problem that various data aggregators might still have the incorrect criminal records in their databases even after correcting police and court records. Consequently, a future background check will return the incorrect criminal records. This is just one example of the kinds of impact that may continue to affect the victims of identity theft for some months or even years after the crime, aside from the psychological trauma.

        Medical Identity Theft:

In this case someone assumes your identity for medical reasons and/or for someone else to foot the bill.

        Identity Cloning and Concealment:

In order to conceal their own true identity, the identity thief pretends someone else. For examples, illegal immigrants, hiding from creditors or those who just want to become "anonymous" for their some cause. Identity theft is used to obtain credit and usually surfaces when the debts rise, on the other hand, concealment may go undetected indefinitely, particularly if the identity thief is able to obtain false credentials in order to pass various authentication tests in everyday life.

        Synthetic Identity Theft:

It is a variation of identity theft which has recently become more common. Here identities are formulated either completely or partially. The most common technique used by criminals is to combine an actual social security number with a name and birth date other than those related with the number. It is very difficult to track synthetic identity theft as it does not show directly on either person's credit report, but may appear as an entirely new file in the credit bureau or as a sub-file on one of the victim's credit reports. Creditors, who grant the credit without recognizing the person, are the primary victims of Synthetic identity theft. Individual victims can be affected if their names become confused with the synthetic identities, or if negative information in their sub-files impacts their credit ratings.

Read about Identity Theft Scams