Identity Theft Essay

Thank you for your letter, and I am truly sorry to hear about the identity theft that happened to your sister-in-law. Identity theft is a huge problem and affects a lot of people all over the world. According to one statistic (BJS), 17.6 million people aged 16 or older were affected by identity theft in the United States in 2014. That means that in 2014 about 5 percent of the people in the United States were involved in identity theft. But don’t be worried by the end of this you will know everything about Identity Theft. First, I will explain the basics about Identity Theft. Identity theft occurs when someone accesses someone else’s identity and uses it for their personal gain, such as accessing their money. With increases in technology around the world it has become easier for identity theft to occur. In the United States identity thieves targets a new victim every two seconds. In addition, from 2008-2013 there have been 73.9 million victims of Identity fraud in the United States. There are multiple ways that these thieves can access your

If you think that your identity has been stolen put a fraud alert on your credit report. This action notifies lenders that they should be more precautions when they are giving credit and serves as a “red flag” on your credit report. You should also contact the FTC or the federal trade commission, and file and Identity theft Affidavit. If you do this the FTC will inform you what to do based on the severity of the Identity Theft. A person should also protect their social security number by calling the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Lastly, you should is put a credit freeze on your account, this will lock your credit information and it prevents credit reporting agencies from releasing your credit report. These are a few things that you should do if you think or know that you are a victim of identity