COVID-19 is all over the news and whether you are plugged in or tuned out, there are security precautions that you should be taking to protect yourself and your family against newly emerged scams. With each day of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans face uncertainty about their financial security. With millions losing their jobs and medical insurance, it creates a really lucrative opportunity for scammers to take advantage and create even more damage to people’s lives.
Medical identities are 50 times more valuable to thieves than financial identities. If someone steals your medical ID, you can get stuck with bills adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, as these criminals can get any type of medical treatments you can think of under your name - from prescription drugs to life saving operations, expensive cosmetic surgeries to medical goods like (i.e. wheel chairs). They can even change your personal details, like your blood type or any allergies that you may suffer with, to fit their own needs.
Imagine an unfortunate incident of having a car crash, where you are in need for an emergency blood transfusion, but the details in your doctor’s medical files are no longer yours. Now imagine that it is the fraudster’s blood type instead, which has obviously been changed by your imposer. This single change of your details could actually kill you!
Too often, smaller medical providers don’t have adequate training or simply can’t afford secure enough technology to combat cybercriminals who are selling people’s medical identities for profit. As you can imagine, if your medical identity is stolen, it can end up on the dark web and that’s when things can get really scary.
In the worst cases, these medical identity cybercriminals can also pronounce you dead. Becoming a victim can cause you a lot of pain and distress, while cleaning up the bills and medical charges can take years. It can really negatively affect your credit and if you are not protected, also cost you fortune in legal fees.
While identity theft criminals can target anyone, seniors can be extremely vulnerable. More so than any other segments of the population for many reasons. A lot of times these episodes happen when the senior lives in solitude. Staying alone and safe is often difficult to do. They don’t normally check their credit card and bank statements thoroughly, so they may not request their credit reports on a regular basis, because they do not find themselves on the market to borrow money for buying a new car or home. In addition seniors are trusting and this makes them more vulnerable and susceptible for crimes of deception.
Identity theft scams are more sophisticated than ever, as there is a new online element to it. Believe it or not, scams often happen when seniors join dating sites trying to find a life partner. Identity theft can happen to anyone, as these thieves do not discriminate and the chances are that if you have not been victim, you probably know someone who has. They can do a lot of financial damage and its very difficult to reverse its effects once the damage has been done.
One thing that these criminals can do to a person, once they get hold of your identity, is to declare you deceased because that’s when they can get the perfect opportunity to cash in on their victims. It could seriously be a living nightmare trying to prove your identity and that you’re still alive and present.
It may be hard to believe, but more than 5,000 US citizens a year are being declared deceased. It’s unbearable to think that over a short period of time, the social security office can alert all of your creditors that you are resting in peace due to these identity theft criminals. Things can actually escalate really quickly as your credit cards, bank accounts, health insurance and even your doctor’s office can be alerted that you have died. If you are retired, the government can take back your retirement checks and put you into a really vulnerable position. You may need to pay many personal visits and make lots of phone calls to your creditors to prove that you are here, which can be a really time consuming and very distressing experience if you have got no monitoring protection in place.
Losing a family member is an extremely hard and emotional time to cope with in the first place. It’s always a very difficult and distressing time that a family can go through. Unfortunately, again this is another opportunity for the thieves to strike at the time when the family should be left alone in peace to deal with the grief.
It is a very devious, but fairly smart way for the thieves to steal someone’s identity, as the victims are not there to care anymore. With just 10 dollars, the identity thieves can get a copy of any death certificate. Also, once they gain access to the data on the birth certificate, they can go to the postal service and file a change of address for them to have the mail diverted from the deceased individual to their own residence. Once they have access to the personal banking details and credit cards of the victims, they can then drain these bank accounts or make charges on these credit cards. In many cases, the victims’ families could be losing money and sometimes, not even afford to pay for the funerals of their loved ones. These criminals take advantage of people when they are in their most vulnerable states, both emotionally and financially.
Parents will do everything they can to keep their children safe from the many dangers of life, but there is one crime targeting children that you may have never thought of. The Child identity theft! This kind of theft is actually more prevalent than you may think. Usually when you think of an identity theft, you are thinking of someone wanting your money, getting into your bank account or getting your credit cards. Kids certainly don’t have that, but they have something that every criminal wants – social security numbers.
In 2019, the USA had over 1 million children have their identity stolen, while many of them were under the age of 8. Once your kids’ identity is compromised, it can take years before it will get noticed and in that time a lot of damage can be done. Unfortunately, on many occasions, special needs children have fallen victim to this crime. Remember, these criminals do not discriminate!
When someone applies for a loan or a credit card in your child’s name and presents the bank or lender with a social security number, the vendors do not go to the social security administration to verify the name or age connected to the social security number. Instead, they go to the credit bureaus to check the credit score and the credit history. If your child doesn’t have credit yet, it’s a clear sign for the banks that this is a clean record and that’s what the criminals want. They can rank up debts in your child’s name and completely ruin your young one’s credit, all the while, you may not find that out until your child needs to use the credit to get a student loan or car loan, later on in their life. The scary part of any identity theft is that these criminals can sell your child’s social security number to the dark web, which is big business for criminals. Research also shows that many children that are bullied online are 9 times more likely to fall victim to Identity Theft. In several cases, the child’s identity theft has been linked to doctors’ offices, teachers, childminders or even step-parents.
Our identity theft protection is not only monitoring your child’s credit and social security number, but we also monitor your child’s social media accounts for online bullying, keeping a close eye on the dark web for any unusual activity involving them.
Only a small percentage of parents are aware of their children’s activities online. Many kids don’t tell their parents that they’re being cyberbullied. Kids might feel embarrassed or ashamed to let you know they’ve been targeted. They also might be afraid that your involvement will make things worse. But, if you find out your kid has been cyberbullied, it probably means the issue is serious enough for you to get involved.
Just like other forms of bullying, children bullied on the internet experience fear, anxiety, low self-esteem and depression, while many victims feel alone, isolated and humiliated. If bullying is left unaddressed, a number of issues can crop up, including eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and even thoughts of suicide. If a child is being bullied online, they may not know who is bullying them (the bully may have created an anonymous online account) and this can be an extremely frightening experience with long lasting consequences.
One of the many features that makes our identity theft protection program stand out from our competition is that we offer social media and dark web monitoring, so if your child is being bullied online, our monitoring system will alert you straight away that you can deal with this issue swiftly and effectively in its early stages.
The time spent going to college is, for most students, one of the best and most memorable periods of their life. Make sure it is memorable for the right reasons, instead of the trauma and suffering caused by identity theft. Be vigilant about protecting your child’s identity, as this can be especially detrimental to a recent college grad who's just starting their new adult life, only to realize their credit is ruined and many of their next steps in life will be difficult to achieve. The victim could be left with a large amount of debt in their name that they don't even know exists until they are denied a job or loan. The consequences of identity theft can be dire. It can take years of effort for a victim to repair their credit damage.
