Identity theft is a serious crime that can affect anyone and it often grows very quickly. It’s a digital epidemic that can leave everyone at risk, including, adults, children and elderly. Unfortunately, many people don’t know that their identity has been stolen and we shouldn’t think that identity theft is only related to financial matters. In many cases, identity theft will immediately ruin our lives. As an example, identity theft can be used to impersonate us so people will easily commit crime in our name. It means that warrants can be issued in our name and in some cases, arrest can be made. Many people spend time in jail for things that they didn’t. Victims will suddenly discover that they have extensive criminal record and it can be difficult to clear our name.

Character identity theft can start from a lost wallet, which can be snatched away by criminals. They may commit several crimes in our name and once our records have been stained by criminal acts that we didn’t do, we could face the consequences. We could lose our job and it will be impossible to find new ones. People could buy a car with our ID card, as well as adding burglary and bad checks to our name. People could be surprised when they are stopped by the local police force and accused of doing bad things related to the law. It would be very difficult to convince the police officers that we are not the criminals. Even if we are released, the damage has been done. We could have lost our professionals reputation and our career is ruined.

Social Security Numbers or SSN is a common source for identity theft. It happens when a criminal steals your SSN and do specific things in your name. As an example, the person may get employment in your name and this causes the IRS to require you to pay income taxes for earning that you don’t get. Improper use of SSN could also cause you to lose specific life sustaining benefits. If your credit history is ruined without a reason, then there’s a possibility that your identity has been misused by a criminal. This could happen when you are somehow late with income tax payment. When the taxman arrives to your door, he is not bringing good news. It may mean that something has happened to your finances and you may have accumulated more than $50,000 tax bill.

Driver license also contains some amount of personal information that can be used in identity theft activity. When people already obtain our driver license details, they could misuse our information after committing various traffic related offenses. Victims could have their driver license revoked without any reason that they are aware of. It will take some amount of hard work to reinstate our driving license and we need to do more to clear poor driving records. We need to do this if we want to avoid losing car insurance or facing difficulty in future car loan applications.