Is ID Theft Inevitable In The UK Today?

No matter where we turn we hear the same story. Several millions of pounds are defraud from our bank and credit card accounts each year. Phishing e-mail are all the rage, such that it is now almost impossible for us to trust any e-mail that is not from someone we already know. Over 400 credit card details are stolen every single day! In fact, credit card theft in the UK is now so common that your stolen credit card number will likely be sold for less than £1! It’s got to the stage where we now have to ask ourselves whether or not ID theft is an inevitable part of like in the UK today?

Vigilance, vigilance, vigilance!

The answer to that has to be no! While ID theft is becoming more common, the reason for that must, in part, be due to the vast amount of additional information we have about ourselves now. Previously we may have had one or two credit card and one bank account and a building society account. We certainly would not have had an internet bank account, because such a thing would not have existed until fairly recently. Today, however, we have multiple credit card, such that there are now more credit cards issued in the UK than people living here, we have access to internet bank accounts, internet stock trading accounts, etc. You name it, we have it.

What we have yet to adapt to is a change in our personal security outlook. Too many of us are too trusting and view the problem of keeping our private financial affairs secret in the way we did 20 years ago. With changing times must come changing attitudes and if we want to stay ahead of the UK ID thieves we needed to adapt our security measures to meet the times we now live in.

Increased security measures

Today, not only do we need to increase our general security measures, but we also need to make sure we increase our ‘virtual’ security measures. For example,

• We need to make sure that no one is reading our postal mail. So, don’t throw away private financial information in your rubbish bin. Shred the information instead
• We need to install firewalls and security programs on our computers so that hackers and spammers cannot access our financial information and use this against us
• We need to stay ahead of the security game by staying up to date with the latest trends. If you receive a notice from your UK credit card provider or bank that a new scam is being tried, don’t discard it in the belief it’ll never happen to you
• Finally, unfortunately, we do need to be less trusting of those who send us unsolicited e-mails and free gifts.

While the chances of us falling foul to ID theft in the UK certainly seems to be far greater today than it was a decade or two ago, we can protect against this happening to us if we simply implement a few common sense security measures that we stick too. In this regard, it is up to each of us to try and minimize the opportunities that UK ID thieves have to steal our Ids in the UK.