National Identity Fraud Prevention Week or was it “Identity Theft for Dummies?
National Identity Fraud Prevention Week ran from the 17th-23rd October last year for the first time. There was a great deal of publicity regarding identity fraud as might have been expected but was it perhaps a case of “too much information”? It is certainly understandable that a great deal of information was given about how to prevent identity fraud and what to do if you fell victim to it. However, there was also a great deal of information given that would certainly help the criminally-inclined who might otherwise never have thought that this was a way to make some easy money. Identity theft is growing fast, costing around £1.7 billion and affecting up to 100,000 people each year. Strangely, it’s not a crime at the moment although the Government is considering making it one. It only becomes a crime when a stolen identity is actually used to obtain goods and services by deception at which point it becomes known as identity fraud. Almost 20% of consumers in the USA admit to falling vic
