Antonimus Commercial Articles

One afternoon a few weeks after Christmas, our family was surprised by a knock at the door. Apparently my wife had left her wallet in a market shopping basket at the market and this stranger had used my wife’s address to return it. All of us were so grateful towards the stranger that we offered her the money in the wallet although the stranger politely declined. My spouse had not even became aware her wallet had been misplaced! My wife naturally blames it on our new newborn who was distracting her. We thanked her and as she left, my spouse and I both felt inspired by the fact that there still appeared to be good people still walking the earth.

Shortly after the incident, my wife noticed she had not only her social security card in the wallet but our kids also. While doing some reorganizing, she had forgotten to remove them. Despite the fact that we were concerned with this total stranger having so much of my wife’s information and toyed with obtaining some kind of identity theft protection. But the more we thought about just how much information this complete stranger possessed, the more troubled we became.

Once we finally made up our minds to enroll into a fraud protection program, my wife’s and our children’s credit profile indicated we were correct to be concerned. There were address change requests and new accounts opened. She had even tried to access our checking account. We were dumbfounded at why she would return the wallet to us but one good thing is we uncovered the identity theft in it’s early stages. Unfortunately my wife and children were forced to change most of their information, including their social security numbers.

Identity frqaud is not something we ordinarily contemplate much about everyday unless it hits close to home or we see on the news. We don’t usually spend our days thinking about what we might have to go through if we were to be victimized. Having a job application declined because of supposed bad credit? Being rushed to the emergency room and given the wrong type of blood because another individual piggybacked on your health insurance? Going to prison for someone else’s crimes? Having your checking account drained of all your money? These may be scary sounding scenarios, but how likely is this to happen to you? Unfortunately, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America with over 10 million projected victims in 2010. These are some recent examples:

• A college student was robbed near her dormitory parking lot and the thief took her bag. About 90 days later, she discovered that someone had opened charge card accounts at Macy’s, Target, and Old Navy.
• Police apprehended a single mother for supposedly having conceived and given up a cocaine-addicted infant. To clear her name, she had to prove that somebody else had given the hospital her information during birth.
• An organized crime ring used the identity of a fortune 500 company’s president for narcotics trafficking. One morning, the innocent victim was awakened by drug enforment officers in his home, who tried to arrest him at gunpoint. After the ordeal, he eventually proved that he was the innocent victim of identity theft.
• A law enforcement official who’d put hundreds of identity thieves in jail found out she’d been victimized when thousands of dollars disappeared from her checking account. Her data had been stolen from a medical facility database.

As you may have already discovered, consumer vigilance isn’t always adequate. Even if you guard your private information like it’s a national treasure, you can’t do much about challenges like indifferent credit insurance policies, the sloppy security practices of certain companies , and ineffective privacy laws. You may not lose things like my wife but things can be stolen from you. You could be the victim of theft or even a pickpoket. While not anything can insure you won’t be victimized, it is easy to certainly increase your chances of long-term success by prevention and early detection. You can get more information about preventing identity theft here.