News

PRESS RELEASE

Cambridge CAB,  7 July 2005 

Moving house?  Make sure you take your identity with you.

Identity theft has been in the news lately because it is a growing problem – but it is closer to home than many people think.
 

‘Clients are increasingly coming to us with this problem and it frequently involves thousands of pounds’, said Rachel Talbot, Chief Executive.  ‘A new twist to this problem is that you may be victims of identity theft – which is of course, fraud but the police may not be interested in helping you because of one factor – the fraudsters have not used your date of birth to purchase goods and services.’ 

How do they do it?
 

Cambridge CAB client, Mr Black, moved house a few months ago.  He had set up a mail forwarding system.  He started receiving invoices and statements from card and catalogue companies for thousands of pounds worth of goods he had not ordered.  They had been obtained by the new occupants of his old house using both his name and address and asking for all goods to be delivered by carrier so they would not be diverted under Mr Black’s postal redirection instructions to the Post Office.
 

Mr Black obviously took the matter up with the companies each time he was sent a bill and managed to get them stopped, but it kept on happening.
 

‘Usually in matters of fraud we can get either the Police or a credit rating company called Equifax to intervene and the matter is either sorted out or the people in question are prosecuted’, said Rachel Talbot.  ‘However in this case neither organisation would take the matter up because the card and catalogue companies had not asked for a date of birth to open the credit accounts, therefore this does not count as real identity theft.’ 
 

Identity theft affects individuals, government departments and private sector organisations, and often forms part of more serious criminal operations such as people trafficking and drug smuggling.
 

A 2002 Home Office Study, which covered the use of false identities and the theft of other people’s identities, estimated that crime facilitated by identity fraud cost the UK £1.3 billion per annum.