Identity theft occurs when someone obtains your personal information, such as a credit card number or a Social Security number, and then either uses this information to gain access to your accounts or uses it to obtain credit in your name and run up enormous bills that come back as black marks on your credit report. Identity theft is an attractive growth industry in the criminal world. It is easy to accomplish and difficult to catch. It can be done through high tech, low tech, or no tech.
Identity thieves obtain your personal information by sophisticated computer tactics that trick you into providing your personal information, or they can obtain it by going through your garbage for credit card applications that you have thrown in the trash. You may be victimized by organized criminals continents away or by members of your own family. Identity theft is everywhere. The damage to your credit report is one of the most harmful aspects of identity theft.
The information contained in your credit report is used by the credit reporting agencies to calculate your credit score. The range of credit scores is between 300 and 850. The higher your score, the better your credit. Your ability to get a car loan, credit card, or a mortgage loan as well as the interest rate for which you will be eligible is affected by your credit score. Many people are unaware that their credit score affects the interest rate that they will be offered on loans or credit cards.
Your ability to get a job, obtain insurance, or rent an apartment is often dependent upon your credit score. When you are the victim of identity theft, the misuse of your 1 credit by the identity thief can drastically reduce your credit score, thereby making your life much more diffi cult and expensive. It is a complicated, frustrating, and time-consuming task to try to correct your credit report after you have been the victim of identity theft. Identity theft can be like herpes: You have it for life. Once you have been victimized, it can come back to haunt you, even years later. One of the latest identity theft twists is medical identity theft, or the theft of a person’s identity to access his health insurance.
The effects on the victim can be enormous. In addition to the usual damage to your credit for unpaid bills, your medical treatment could be based on the identity thief’s medical history. You could receive a prescription that harmfully interacts with other prescriptions you take. You could even receive a blood transfusion of the wrong blood type.
Credit records can be difficult to correct following an identity theft, but medical records can be almost impossible to fi x due to medical privacy laws. Medical identity theft is often an inside job. An employee of the health care provider gives the information to identity thieves, who in turn sell the information to people needing medical care.
Sometimes, however, medical identity theft is an outside job, where the identity thieves go through the trash of a health care provider. Protect yourself from medical identity theft as you would from any identity theft by shredding medical bills and records that you are discarding. In addition, keep an updated copy of your medical records that your physician maintains.
Always read any communications from your health insurance provider carefully, regardless of how difficult they sometimes are to understand. Ask your health insurance provider to give you a list of all payments made in your name. If you fi nd any irregularities, you can follow up with both your physician and the credit reporting bureaus.
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