Synthetic Identity Theft

Among the types of identity theft that are out there is synthetic identity theft.  Through synthetic identity theft a potential thief assumes a fictional identity in order to gain employment, credit/bank accounts, bank loans, etc.  But how does this affect you in the long run?  If someone has become a synthetic identity thief, therefore they’re creating a fake identity to assume, how can that be bad for you?

Well, because usually the fake person is based on some aspects of reality.  Oftentimes a synthetic identity thief will use a real Social Security Number, but will provide a different made up name, and a different address.  Therefore fraud committed by the synthetic identity thief will usually not be included on the credit report of the owner of the wrongly used Social Security Number.

The reason this can be really bad for you, is that it confuses your Social Security Number with two names and addresses for credit reports and with debt collectors.   This means your credit report could be affected by fraudulent charges, or debt collectors could come after you for incidents that aren’t your fault.  Because of the use of a different name but the same SSN you can have trouble clearing these debts.

Someone else using your SSN can also result in a subfile on your credit report.  This means that your file will be linked to the synthetic ID thief’s file.  Which means you could fail to acquire new credit cards, or loans, because of bad credit associated with your SSN.  Unless cleared up this can be a longstanding major problem, which can also cause you to miss out on job employment opportunities.

To avoid becoming a victim, make sure that you pay close attention to your credit reports.  Check to make sure that all of your information is completely accurate, and that there are no subfiles linking you to someone else’s name and credit information.  Also check your mail and beware of change of address notifications, or anything else associated with your SSN that you don’t know about.  All could be signs of synthetic identity theft.