Financial institutions keep close eye on identity theft

This is a pretty long article from a newspaper in Colorado that talks about local banks’ dealings with fraud. Although the title of the article uses the term “identity theft,” in my experience many bank fraud investigators don’t consider bank fraud to be identity theft. They usually define ID theft as having your social security number or driver’s license number used fraudulently, not a financial account. The ITRC (for whom I have been a volunteer for over 2 years) has a much broader definition, which includes financial fraud. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

Telephone fraud has become a major concern for local banks, investment organizations and other financial institutions, but all these businesses practice the same golden rule for customer safety: Never give out any type of information over the phone to any person.

Police reports made in the past have shown situations where people have been contacted by unknown individuals, people pretending to be associated with a person's bank or investment group and are then asked for their Social Cecurity or personal account numbers.

More Fort Morgan Times.

Categories: identitytheft, idtheft, fraud