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A different twist on identity theft
Posted on Jan 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I read an article that talks about an interesting twist on ID theft (see below, registration required). Essentially, a fraudster applies for credit in your name, but purposely mispells the name, or uses a similar but different name; the same goes for the Social Security Number. It seems that in some instances, the credit bureaus may allow the credit check to “go through” because they allow some tolerance for what they assume are honest errors. Afterwards, the fraud becomes even more difficult to track down, because the creditor isn’t even sure who really filed for the credit. Especially if you have a common name.
Now watch out for identity manipulation and synthetic identities.
Edentify Inc., a Pennsylvania-based identity fraud detection firm, says identity manipulation is an insidious and fast-growing form of identity fraud.
It defines identity manipulation as the "intentional modification of identity records for the purposes of deceiving."
"The fraudster is looking to try to change the information enough so that whoever is looking at it from the surface will see it as something different, but the authentication process will match it as something already existing," said Terrence DeFranco, chairman and chief executive officer of Edentify.
Filed under: Identity Theft
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