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Why identity is important?
A person's identity (and their ability to prove it) is central to almost all commercial activity. Organisations need to verify that the person applying for credit is who they say they are and lives where they claim to live.
In the UK, no single document is used to prove identity; rather, various pieces of information (including personal details such as your name, date of birth, address, mother's maiden name etc) and documents such as passports, driving licences, bills etc are used by organisations in order to ‘identify’ a person.
Stealing an identity
Your personal details – such as your fingerprints and physical appearance – can't easily be adopted by someone else, but your other identity details can be used by fraudsters to impersonate you and 'steal' your identity.
They could either open a new account or obtain new credit cards, loans or benefits using your identity, or 'take over' your own existing accounts by impersonating you and changing the address of your account.
The procedures used by organisations to check the information supplied by customers help to detect and prevent most identity fraud. However, some fraudulent applications are accepted due to the sophisticated techniques used by the fraudsters.
What could be done with my stolen identity?
Fraudsters are financial criminals. Beyond that, however, there is no definitive profile of an identity fraudster! There are various reasons, however, why such criminals look to steal identities:
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It is well known that there are large criminal networks that commit identity fraud, using multiple identities and it is estimated that this is responsible for a criminal cashflow of around £10m per day: a significant proportion of which will be used to fund crimes such as human or drug trafficking, illegal immigration, money laundering and terrorism.
For more information, please select from the following options:
How do I avoid being a victim?/Advice for victims
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Identity Fraud?