Identity+Theft.

Emily Harris **
 * Identity theft

**What is identity theft?** Identity theft is a type of fraud which involves stealing money or gaining other benefits by pretending to be someone else. Identity theft can occur in many ways, however two main ways include somebody using your credit card details illegally to make purchases and someone stealing your entire identity to open bank accounts, take out loans or conduct illegal business under your name.

**How does identity theft work?** Many people have personal information at an easy place for criminals to take. These include cards in our wallet, mail, public records, information saved in our computers and information posted on social networking sites.

Identity theft can happen easily and quickly. By leaving your personal information readily available, scammers will have easy access to this information. For example, if you throw your old envelopes away with your address on them, people can take this information.

Phishing scams are an email which is all about tricking you into handing over your personal and banking details to scammers. Most work by including special links in the email to take you to a website where you hand over your details.

If scammers believe that they have most of your personal details they will then trick you by either sending you an email of phoning you to provide account details to ‘confirm’ your identity.

**Warning signs** • You get an email, SMS or a phone call out of the blue asking you to ‘confirm’ banking details. • You notice that amounts of money go missing from your bank account without any explanations.

**How to protect yourself** • NEVER send money or give personal details to people you don’t know and trust. • If you receive a call from your bank or any other organization, don’t provide your personal details, your bank should already know these details and do not ask for them • If you receive a request from a friend or family asking you to transfer money to them, contact them to check that it is actually them before providing personal details • Regularly check your credit card and/or bank statements to ensure that suspicious transactions are detected