Criminals Identify Deceased ID as Easy Target

Physical theft remains the quickest way to steal from an individual, but criminals now recognise the opportunities around information and identity theft, with 79 per cent saying ID fraud is easier than benefit fraud or burglary.

A survey among 53 ex-offenders carried out by Unlock on behalf of Wilmington Millennium found strong evidence that criminals are turning towards data-driven crimes over other options.
 
“We felt running this survey with the ex-offenders charity would give us some valuable insights into the issue of identity theft, but we were not quite prepared for what we found,” admits Karen Pritchard, product director, Halo, at Wilmington Millennium. “We expected that stealing wallets and credit cards would come out fairly high, but the fact that deceased identity fraud came second was a shock.”

As the top ten forms of identity theft reveal, a combination of physical, direct and data-driven approaches are now being adopted. While several of these rely on old-school confidence trickery, such as phishing, bogus texts or calls, or physical removal of mail or discarded documents, it is the harvesting of information to build a full profile and hijack accounts or identities, which is troubling.

“Companies should be using the resources that are in place. We capture deceased daily data and output our file weekly, so clients are getting information on deaths that have happened during that week,” says Pritchard. “So perhaps there is a problem with the processes at the clients’ end.”
CIFAS estimates that identity fraud has a £3.3 billion annual cost. “Criminals are very clever and see deceased identity fraud as an easy option. We know it is avoidable,” says Pritchard.

The ten top forms of identity theft are: stolen wallets/handbags, deceased identity fraud, mail theft, SMSishing, Dumpster diving, Phishing, Skimming and overlays, phone fraud, online fraud and change of address fraud.
DataIQ: http://bit.ly/1SscFHO