Identity fraud case study

Identity theft is when an individual's personal or confidential information is obtained by another person without their knowledge. Identity fraud occurs when criminals use this information to obtain credit, goods or other services in that person's name.

Identity Fraud case study - Marc, a 22 year old assistant manager, never gave much thought to Identity Fraud until he received an email from a bank telling him that his ‘application for a credit card was being processed’.
Marc hadn’t applied for a credit card so he contacted the bank immediately and cancelled the application.

Unfortunately the criminal – who had got hold of Marc’s date of birth, email and postal addresses among other bits of key information,– had applied for other loans and credit cards and Marc continued to receive emails alerting him to new applications under his name.
Marc contacted the police.  He was extremely worried about the extent of the criminal’s activity and the effect this would have on his credit score.  It was time consuming to cancel each application and get them removed from the lenders’ records.

Marc joined a credit reference agency to check his credit report.  He then  found further applications in his name that were fraudulent.  The agency stepped in to help Marc, and a note was attached to his credit report explaining that he had been the victim of attempted ID Fraud.

Marc said “Before this happened I never thought twice about ID Fraud and certainly didn’t think I’d end up becoming a victim of it.  I’m now extremely vigilant about getting rid of my confidential information to make sure that it’s not out there for criminals to exploit.