Recession Drives Innovation in Criminal Underworld
With the UK economy starting to show glimmers of recovery, the recession has taught us all many lessons. Unfortunately, criminals have learnt new tricks over the past few years and identity theft and the resulting fraud sits at the top of the UK’s crime statistics.
Identity Fraud is the use of a stolen (or completely false) identity to obtain goods or services by deception. Criminals can use misappropriated identities to obtain ‘new lines of credit’ such as loans, mortgages or credit cards. Alternatively, they can target their victims ‘existing lines of credit’ by contacting financial institution(s) and pretending to be the genuine cardholder. Funds can then be transferred out of the account, the address changed and replacement cards ordered.
Growth in account takeover has been created by the recession – as financial institutions limited new line of credit, fraudsters turned to existing accounts. CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service has reported that application fraud has decreased by nearly a quarter in the first nine months of 2009. However, as the recession subsides, it is almost certain the new line of credit applications will increase, creating more opportunities for criminals.
In the same period there has been a total increase in the total number of identity fraud cases reported by CIFAS to over 72,000, and a 36% increase in the number of victims of impersonation to over 59,000. This form of crime is expected to rise significantly over the next 5 years.
FraudLock, founded at the beginning of 2009, offers an Identity Theft Protection service for UK consumers which provides unlimited access to members personal Equifax Credit Reports, Credit Monitoring, Pro-Active Protection across all three UK Credit Reference Agencies, Statement Reminders and Free PC Security Software amongst its 12 core benefits – it is currently the most comprehensive protection available in the UK.
CEO, Charlie Scott comments: “Identity fraud is a particularly damaging crime and can happen to anyone. Unfortunately both the risk and the consequences of this crime are not being recognised by the general public.” In a survey conducted by Lloyds TSB, 76% of adults are concerned about identity theft however 57% of these admitted they have not done enough to protect themselves and 25% would not know how to.
He added, “The common attitude is that ‘it won’t happen to me’ but when it does, it is destructive and extremely time consuming to resolve.”
Thankfully, ways to protect against Identity Theft are currently getting high levels of media coverage as a result of the increasing number of crimes. Each day there are more and more stories in the news, so with this in mind it is hoped that UK individuals are will become more proactive and take the right steps to protect their identity.
The recession has shifted the fraud landscape dramatically, but whatever the future holds for the UK economy, whilst life is being made easy for these criminals, Identity Theft and the resulting fraud will certainly continue to grow at an alarming rate.