Identity theft victim - if you think you're a victim

Identity theft victim - if you think you're a victim

Identity theft victim response and recovery strategies to minimize money and emotional losses. Your online resource to identify issues, create strategies.

Identity Theft victim experience runs the gamut of emotions and money issues. The typical identity theft victim discovers sometime months or even years that her personal and private life has been taken over by unknown criminals. Nearly 90% of ID theft victim reports show the victim stumbling onto the crime accidentally. A credit card application is refused, or a credit bureau report suddenly turns up negative, an aggressive debt collection agency suddenly shows up demanding immediate payments for mystery purchases all of which instantly turns a law-abiding citizen into an identity theft victim.

Identity theft victim numbers are on the rise. Nearly 10 million Americans now qualify for inclusion in the identity theft victim demographic since 2000. Meanwhile, identity theft perpetrators utilize increasingly sophisticated techniques to harvest personal data illegally in order to gain access to financial accounts and credit. P>
The emotional stress and overall impact for an ID theft victim mirrors that of violent crime. Initially, the identity theft victim reports a feeling of being violated, a grotesque invasion of privacy, vulnerability, and a collapse of controls and sense of security in their lives.

The typical identity theft victim will spend up to 600 hours of private time trying to sort out affairs, spend up to thousands of dollars in legal expenses to correct credit bureau records and to be re-instated for credit at banks, insurance firms, broker dealers, credit card companies and so on. Along the discovery path the identity theft victim learns that the perpetrator stole credit card data in order to establish new credit card accounts which would be "buy-not-pay" fraud based account. In an estimated 25% of identity theft cases, the identity theft victim discovers that existing credit card accounts have been taken over, with reckless and aggressive pattern of purchases taking place over a short period of time.

Fortunately, some featured of identity theft law exist in order to limit your liability from financial fraud. ID theft and fraud liability is expressly limited to the first $50 of losses according to 15 USC section 1643. The balance of identity theft and fraud liability is met by businesses through their indemnity insurance. With legal protection as solace for the money side of the matter, the identity theft victim will not generally be required to fund the average $18,000 in fraudulent purchases and resulting debt.

However, the identity theft victim obtains no legal or financial relief associated with "cleaning up" after the identity theft criminals have had their way inside the victim's credit and banking or checking accounts. Hundreds of hours of personal time and potentially thousand of dollars spent over years will be necessary in order to reconstitute records, close offending accounts opened by the identity theft criminals. Meanwhile, the identity theft victim soon learns that the industry stakeholders with an interest in identity theft prevention (such as the credit issuers along with governmental and law enforcement agencies) do precious little to either assist victims or to create mechanisms and business processes to thwart identity theft in the future. To the identity theft victim, the experience brings together intense frustration, financial uncertainty, and an awareness of shortcomings in our credit-driven free enterprise market system.

To further understand identity theft victim issues, along with identity theft prevention measures that you can take, please continue to utilize this web site. Additionally, public service information sites discussing the full scope and implication of identity theft include Privacy Rights or Identity Theft Resource Center.

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