Social Security numbers are, by far, the most sensitive and crucial piece of information that is most frequently being sought for by identity thieves. That is because someone’s SSN # can be used as the primary means for compromising its lawful owner’s identity for illegal purposes like unlocking credit cards and bank accounts or opening new credit cards and bank accounts in the victim’s name.
There’s an evidence from Private Investigators who specialize in online forensics and Internet crimes that criminals often resort to public records to obtain some closely guarded private data such as Social Security numbers and other. Another specialist working for Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Program has confirmed that reviewing public records through legally available online channels is undoubtedly one of the main and easiest ways to get hold of people’s Social Security numbers. The way has appeared almost simultaneously with the evolvements of the Internet. According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Program estimates that yearly one of every twenty five American citizens at some moment discover they became a victim of identity theft resulting in material damage due to illegally obtaining loans leading to compromising their credit report and credit history.
A recent case reported by the federal Department mentioned two persons who under the pretext of the necessity of running a background check for employment purposes accessed court records and derived from them Social Security numbers of around one hundred citizens residing in Lancaster and York whose information became available and open for ID theft because of them having been charged with DUI. Having obtained other necessary data with the help of those ssn’s, the identity thieves opened bank accounts in those people’s name and applied for loans from their behalf and were successful in netting approximately thirty thousands dollars before the state law enforcement agents stopped their illegal activities, had not one of the victims revealed there’s was something wrong with his finances while running a routine inspection of his credit report.