With the growing awareness of people about identity theft protection, the same amount of effort is also being put into effect by the identity thieves. Not only are they finding new ways to scam innocent civilians of their personal information, but they are also continuously modifying and developing their techniques to fool other people better.
However, these scammers and thieves are still bound to lose as all of their methods boil only to a single point: to get your personal details, most importantly, your Social Security number and birth date. So, once anyone asks about these details, you should always start to get protective.
Anyway, to help you better understand identity theft protection better, here’s a list of different ID scams that are still being used nowadays by thieves.
1. Jury duty. Let’s face it, jury duty can be quite a task for a lot of people, so skipping it is way easier than going through it. And as anyone can be subjected to court summoning, this is seen by the identity thieves as a good way to get to a lot of people.
This scam works through a phone call placed by a thief to its victim pretending to be a court officer that has an arrest warrant for the victim because he skipped on his jury duty. When the victim protests about not getting any summons, the caller will then ask the victim his Social Security number and birth date so the caller can “cancel” the warrant.
Now, those who have an inkling about how legal things go, they would know that there’s no way that a court officer would need such information, but with intimidation and a little rattling, anyone can easily scare an innocent individual into giving their personal information.
2. Voter registration. Whenever the election season comes around, ID thieves will take the opportunity to call you and pretend to be from a certain governmental agency who needs your Social Security number to check whether you’ve already registered to vote.
Again, this is a scam, because voter registration officials do their business in person. So, if they need you to get registered, they go to you and give you a Voter Registration Form to complete.
3. Online job listing. Aside from minding identity theft protection against phone scammers, the internet is another place you should be wary of. As scammers are already innovative enough nowadays, your email is not the only place to get your Social Security numbers anymore.
Online job listings are now being used as a tool in ID theft. And with the recession ongoing, a lot of people can easily be lured into applying to any job online. So, what the scammers will do is to include a space where the applicant is required to enter their Social Security number, and voila: instant identity theft case.
Again, in all of these scams, the number one identity theft protection tip is still to never give away your personal details if the transaction’s not official. If you live with that tip, you can be sure that you’ve got some identity theft protection measures in place.
