Recession Drives Innovation In Criminal Underworld

With the UK economy starting to show glimmers of recovery

, the recession has taught us many lessons. Unfortunately, criminals have learnt new tricks over the past few years and at the top of the statistics is identity theft.

There are two main types of fraud:

Identity Fraud is the use of stolen (or completely false) identity to obtain goods or services such as loans, mortgages or credit cards, sometimes referred to as new line of credit applications.

Account (facility) Takeover is typically when a criminal gathers information about the intended victim, and then contacts the financial institution(s) 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 affected by the recession as financial institutions limited new line of credit, fraudsters turned to existing accounts. CIFAS, the UKs 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 the year has, offers an ID protection service for UK individuals for a minimal monthly subscription or one-off annual fee. For this, members get unlimited access to their credit reports, statement reminders and black market monitoring as some of the 12 benefits - it is currently the most comprehensive protection available in the UK.

CEO, Charlie Scott comments: Identity fraud is a particularly vicious crime and can happen to anyone. Unfortunately the message is still not getting across as to the growing number of victims and the severity of the damage that can be caused. 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% did not know how.

He added, It is the common attitude that it wont happen to me but when it does, it is destructive and extremely time consuming to resolve.

Thankfully, the industry of ID protection is getting more 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 will take the right steps to protect their identity.

Recession has shifted the fraudulent criminal landscape, but whatever the future holds for the UK economy, whilst these types of crime are being made easy with litter chance of prosecution, ID theft and ID fraud will surely continue to grow.

by: jacksmith

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