Preventing Identity Theft

Introduction Having your identity stolen is a very difficult thing to have to deal with. It could prevent you from paying bills and obtaining credit, and the only way to prevent your identity from being stolen is by protecting it. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States and is a serious problem that affects millions of innocent people (Identity Theft Victim Statistics), and the government need to implement better regulations to help put a stop to this crime. Identity theft is described as a crime where a thief steals your full name or social security number and uses it in a fraudulently manner to apply for credit cards, file taxes, or even get medical services (Identity Theft). As a victim your credit is ruined and it will cost you time and money to get it all straightened out. There are several different types of identity theft that can affect you such as, child ID theft, tax ID theft, medical ID theft, senior ID theft, and social media ID theft (Identity Theft).
Children’s identity is vulnerable because the theft can go undetected for many years and by the time they are adults the damage has already been done …show more content…
The thief will still one person’s social security number and combine it with another person’s name, and the use someone else’s address to create a brand new identity and then turn around and uses the fraudulent identity to apply for credit, rent an apartment, or make major purchases (Identity Theft). Synthetic ID Theft is difficult to detect because the fraud is not directly tied to just one person which want allow fraud alerts and monitoring services to stop or prevent these scams (Identity Theft). Although you cannot prevent synthetic ID theft, you should still get copies of your credit report to check for accounts that you did not open (Identity