GDA Action September 2019

September 2019 • 19 Merriam-Webster defines fraud as “an act of deceiving or misrepresenting.” Identity theft is a type of fraud whereby the thief uses personally identifiable information to obtain goods, services, employment, commit a crime, or gain any type of benefit without revealing the thief’s real identity. If you are like me, I used to think identity theft was all about someone stealing my credit card and racking up charges. My identity theft plan was simple. If I never had my wallet stolen, shredded my important documents before disposal, and didn’t shop online with retailers I did not recognize, I was ‘good’. As the world and technology have changed, I realized that my identity theft plan needed to change with it. Even if you have never been a personal victim of identity theft, this type of fraud is important because it affects us all. In the 2018 True Cost of Fraud Report, LexisNexis notes that fraud continues to grow in retail, financial service companies, and lending services. Financial service companies and lenders are experiencing the most rapid growth in fraud. It is estimated that for every dollar lost to fraud, there is a loss of up to $3.05 in revenue for these companies. While you may not be personally responsible for repayment of fraudulent charges, in the end those losses are passed on to consumers as a whole, and we all end up paying the price. When consumers become victims of identity theft there may also be a loss of time, increased stress, and loss of money. The time spent by victims to resolve identity theft issues eats away at that person’s personal, work, and family time. At its extreme, victims of identity theft have been accused and sentenced in crimes they did not commit or have lost out on employment and financial opportunities. There are a multiple different types of identity theft. IDShield is a nationwide identity theft protection service, and in their April 2019 Investigators Insights Report they noted that in 2018 the most common »