Identity theft happens more often that you think and if you think it won’t happen to you, it can!  Even if you’re the most tech savvy person, criminals are so advanced today that they don’t even need access to your computer.  Instead, they can hack into main servers at major corporations.

The thing I never understood was why they didn’t take the knowledge that they have learned about hacking and apply it to something that is actually legal.  I guess we will never understand.

Identity theft happens all the time and if you’re not protecting yourself, I would recommend services such as LifeLock that can help you protect yourself at all times and even give you a guarantee.

Let’s take a look at some facts that you might have never known about this type of theft.

  1. Around 1 in 20 adults have been victims.
  2. Every minute, around 20 adults become victim.
  3. Around every year, over 10 million adults have experienced this!
  4. On average, it will take someone 100 hours to get things settled.
  5. The average person spends $1,000 – $8,000 to recover.
  6. Over $200 billion is lost with businesses worldwide by theft.
  7. 50% of victims don’t find out about theft until 3 months after.
  8. Close to 50% have a hard time getting loan after everything is said and done.
  9. Every month, these numbers are going to go up.
  10. The average thief gets around $5,000 in cash / merchandise per account.

To get more information on facts, Equifax, Squidoo, as well as this NCJRS article has some great facts that you can read more into.

How can people steal my identity?

There are so many ways and as I mentioned above, you’re going to find that it just doesn’t come from the computer.  They can steal records from your work, they can even bribe people to hand over information.  If that isn’t bad enough, they can hack into store computers where you have used your credit card.

The fact here is that 90% of the time, it is out of your control to protect it.  Once they steal it, there’s a good chance that you don’t know about it if you don’t have a monitoring service.