Identity Theft the most horrible thing to encounter amongst all the data thefts on or off the internet. In identity theft, an irrelevant person accesses, stores and misuses your personal information without your consent or notice. There are certain types of identity theft, here are some of them:

• Criminal Identity Theft: It is the nastiest thing to encounter. A criminal might use your information to avoid arrest and summons. This way, agencies might mistake you for that criminal and arrest you instead. Imagine cops knocking on your door with an arrest warrant when you haven’t done anything wrong!

• Medical ID Theft: Some data thief might store your medical insurance data to use it for another person’s medical checkups. The sign of a medical identity theft is that you’ll find some irrelevant medical conditions listed in your medical record that you never suffered from. In this case, contact with local law enforcement authorities immediately.

• Financial ID Theft: Someone might take your financial info and use it to get loans, credit and other financial benefits without your notice. This can drastically affect your financial life, moreover, you might start receiving tax calls, payment due messages from your bank etc. This one is very hard to recover from.

• Child ID Theft: This is the most common type of identity theft, and that too for a reason. Children are often more prone to leaking their personal information online, and also they do not have any loans, outstanding warrants or anything else like a grown adult. So, it is easier for a identity thief to obtain and misuse their identity and social security number.

    We’ve already read briefly the different types of identity theft, which should be enough for even an average internet user to understand and avoid in the future. Here are some points that can help you identify an identity theft.

i. In the case of a financial ID theft, you might start receiving withdrawal messages from your bank that you can’t explain. The withdrawals would be from completely different accounts than yours. This means that someone has used all your info to make a fake account, that person would do all the withdrawals with your name, and you’d be called by the IRS for tax purposes.

ii. Another indicator of identity theft is that you’ll stop getting your mails and bills, this means that someone else is using your information, and is pretending to be you.

iii. Your bank might start calling you to collect debts that you’ve never taken. The thief uses your information to take debts on your name. That’s awful, isn’t it?

iv. You might start seeing irrelevant medical conditions listed on your healthcare bills. That’s a sign that someone has used your health care plan to benefit themselves.

v. IRS might call you for more than one tax returns, or might call you file one. They’ll also name the employers that you haven’t ever worked for.