Identity Theft Council Warns Of Troubling Trend In Identity Thieves Exploiting Payday Loopholes

Councils Encourages Consumers And Payday Lenders To Be More Vigilant

Walnut Creek, California (PRWEB) January 31, 2013

The Identity Theft Council is warning of a troubling increase in the exploitation of payday lending loopholes by identity thieves. According to the Council, because many payday lenders don’t run credit checks with the three main consumer credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and Transunion – before granting credit, identity thieves are increasingly turning to these lenders to bypass the few security precautions available to consumers to protect themselves.

“I would estimate that more than a third of the identity theft cases we’ve worked on in the last six months have involved payday lenders,” according to Neal O’Farrell, founder and Executive Director of the Identity Theft Council. “It’s a triple whammy for victims. Not only do they have to fight a potentially serious case of identity theft, one that can last for months and even years, they’re often also faced with endless harassment and intimidation from unscrupulous payday lenders who deliberately ignore consumer rights. And those same lenders often refuse to cooperate with the credit bureaus to remove fraudulent or incorrect information from the victim’s credit report.”

While consumers can use fraud alerts, credit monitoring, and security freezes to help protect themselves against the most serious types of identity theft, these tools are of little value if the thieves avoid the traditional lending routes and opt to apply for fraudulent payday loans instead.

In one recent case, according to Mr. O’Farrell, a victim of identity theft reported receiving more than 100 harassing calls from payday lenders over a 48-hour period. In a second case, the victim reported receiving harassing and threatening phone calls from the same payday lender more than 300 times over a three-week period.

It’s a national trend, according to Mr. O’Farrell “While we were working on a case on the west coast involving a group of more than 300 victims of payday-related identity theft, the media was reporting that thieves who had accessed the personal information of more than 300,000 victims of a data breach at a Florida university had taken that stolen information directly to the same payday lenders we were dealing with.”

The Council is working with a number of partners to find ways to close this lending and security loophole and provide better protection for consumers and victims.

In the meantime, the Council offers the following tips to prevent and respond to this type of identity theft:

About the Identity Theft Council

the Identity Theft Council (ITC) is an award-winning non-profit, grassroots organization that provides hands-on support for victims of identity theft, helps law enforcement provide a more coordinated response, and promotes identity theft education and awareness at a community level. The Council was founded by security expert Neal O’Farrell with the support of local law enforcement. For more information or to become involved in the Identity Theft Council, please visit: http://www.identitytheftcouncil.org/.

Neal OFarrell
neal_ofarrell@yahoo.com
9259140248
Email Information

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Identity Number Theft prevention

Identity number theft is increasing at a higher rate after every coming day. These number thefts include the theft of credit card number, veteran number and social security number. The news of identity number theft is heard commonly on the television, newspaper and especially on web. The theft of this number brings along the damage of huge amount of money and credit.

The biggest tragedy of identity number theft is that anyone who owns a credit card or who possesses security number can be a victim of this theft unwillingly. No matter if you are an individual shopping for your family or a businessman doing some business financial transactions, you can be attacked by these frauds. These scams are out there waiting for you to do a single mistake.

With the advent of Internet shopping and online marketing, this theft has been increased more. On web people can pretend to be someone else so one needs to be extra vigilant while doing financial transactions online.

With this increasing risk, the question arises: what we must do to protect ourselves from these thieves? Awareness is the pre-requisite. Get yourself educated with all the procedures to save your security numbers from being stolen. There are some steps which might help you in this regard:

• You must be wise enough not to speak out your personal information in front of strangers. Remember these things are not to be told aloud. If you are that foolish to do this, you will have to suffer the worst consequences.
• Keep your check books safe in a lock at home or in office. Do not carry the whole check book with you in your wallet. You can keep one or two blank checks if it is so necessary. Stolen check books or check register can cause you much trouble in the end.
• If you are in a public place, be very tactful about the financial events happening in your life. These events include capital investments, big ticket purchase, stocks or property acquisition. Talking about financial events in public can lead to unwanted interest on your finances.
• You might be more than one credit card holder but you must not carry all of these with you. If you lost your wallet, you will loose all what you have. So keep only one credit card with you to minimize the risk.
• Social Security Number is your identity proof so try to memorize it. Never keep the Social Security Card with you as this is the easiest way for thief to take away your identity.
• Avoid using one credit card for high bills. This will drag attention to your finances. Use two cards if you have high bills.
• Try to use Automated Teller machines (ATM) as less as possible. When you use the ATM be sure that the person behind you does not see the transaction you are making. ATM is another hot place for identity number thieves.