Gangs of Identity Thieves

Posted by: Henry B. | Dec 27,2007


This is a very interesting, and alarming, article out of England.  Apparently, a town in the U.K. north of London has been so overwhelmed by identity theft that the majority of residents are switching to cash-only transactions.  Most everyone in the town of 33,000 people has been the victim of identity theft or knows someone who’s had money stolen.  

What makes this alarming is how the theft has occurred.  We’ve written about here how identity theft can affect retirement communities or newlywed thieves go on an international shopping spree.  But these are mostly isolated incidences.  At retirement communities, an orderly might steal credit card information out of a room.  Mostly, identity theft has been a series of isolated incidences – a number of identity thieves working alone.  

But the reason this town was so overtaken was because this was a coordinated effort by a gang of identity thieves.  It’s a pretty scary thought – identity theft with the coordination of the mafia.  Let’s hope this isn’t a harbinger for things to come.  

So what can you do?  A credit monitoring service is recommended.  You can’t possibly monitor every transaction on your debit and credit cards.  You could check your account online, but this information is not necessarily updated in real time and this requires access to a computer every day of the year.  A credit monitoring service will do the work for you for a nominal fee.  I don’t think you have to be at a point where you eschew using your cards forever, but this story shows identity theft is growing, not going away.  

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