Identity theft is growing rapidly across the globe and it has evolved beyond credit card fraud. It's anticipated by several organizations that most people are impacted by identity frauds either directly or indirectly. Users could avoid fraud if they integrate new identity verification methods and thus prevent themselves from becoming another number on a statistics report. According to Javelin, “Identity frauds increased from $3 billion in 2017 to $3.4 billion in 2018”.
Identity theft can be scary for the victims and organizations, as it has damaging effects on finances, reputation, and medical records. Therefore, the victims need to know how they should respond and report the incident properly. Here is a process with details on how to prevent identity theft.
What is Identity Theft?
Identity theft often happens when a fraudster steals someone’s identity by accessing information such as name, DOB, address, etc. This type of fraud happens even if the person is deceased but most usually experience it while they live.
Becoming The Victims of Identity Theft?
Public Places: Most criminals take advantage of a public place to find their next victim. They usually overlook the victim's credit card information as they put their credit card number. These criminals could even overhear the conversation if you are telling someone your credit card number.
Pre-approved Credit Card: If you received a mail containing a pre-approved credit card but you recklessly threw it away without tearing the envelope. The criminals could pick it up and use that without your knowledge. Moreover, if your mail was delivered to a place that others have access to. Criminals could intercept the email and redirect it to another location.
Unsolicited Emails: In most cases, users find an unsolicited email that promises people some benefit while requesting to send their data. The users don’t expect it but the requester in most cases has no intention to keep their promise.
How to Reduce Risk of Identity Fraud
Make sure to change your passwords or passphrases after every few days for online accounts. Prepare your passphrase consisting of at least 12 characters while making it unique to that account. In some cases, you might have to contact the bank to freeze your accounts, so the fraudster couldn’t access any financial information.
Immediately close down any unauthorized credit and charge accounts. To go even further, make sure to cancel the credit card and charge card and request new cards with new account numbers. And prevent any further damage by contacting the bank to inform them about someone using your identity. Keep checking any unauthorized transactions and close accounts, so the future charges are denied. Further, write a letter to the company asking for a record of the problem.
Cyber hackers who breach corporate data steal confidential information, such as home addresses, passwords, and emails. You might be contacted by a business who lost their data in wrong hands - provide users with appropriate instructions.
Preventing Identity Fraud With AI-Powered Document Verification
Most users are required to submit their government-issued ID documents for identity verification to either open an account or perform a transaction. The AI-based solution automatically takes a selfie of the person in real-time and compares it with the picture on an ID document. It prevents the risk of letting the imposter access their victim's account and performs identity authentication.
This verification method works best for businesses that need to authenticate remote transactions and verify the identity of a person on the other end. But with time fraudsters are becoming smart by using sophisticated techniques, such as creating fake documents and allowing others to claim the identity of another person. Here are a few ways the fraud takes advantage to commit identity theft.
False Documents
These documents are often stolen by criminals that are used to bypass document verification.
Illegitimate Documents
Illegitimate documents lack elements incorporated within the original documents, such as holograms, rainbow prints, or other such standards.
Modified Documents
Modified documents are nearly similar to the original documents to fool the verification system. Most times it becomes difficult for humans to identify any alterations. But an AI-powered document verification solution helps in identifying the tampered documents by checking fonts and pixels.
As businesses are growing and more users are coming onboard on different digital platforms, there’s been a surge in identity theft. By taking necessary precautions from the start and enabling AI-powered solutions could save businesses from potential risks of identity fraud. However, most organizations enroll the help of identity verification services providers for identity theft protection.
