On June 16, Monroe County residents had the opportunity to learn how to protect their identity and what to do if their identity was stolen.

Dave Shallcross, director of Senior Protection from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, held an identity theft seminar at the Jackson Township Volunteer Fire House.

“Identity theft comes in many forms,” he said. “Identity theft is when someone uses your personal data like your name, Social Security number to impersonate you, typically using that information to steal from you.”

Other kinds of identity theft are bank fraud and check fraud. Identity theft happens when someone uses sensitive data to pose as you or steal from you, according to Shallcross.

“It is a growing problem in the U.S. and the pandemic relief made it worse as identity thieves targeted relief checks and unemployment benefits. Overall, the Federal Trade Commission received 1.4 million complaints of identity theft from consumers in 2020 up 113% from the year before,” Shallcross said.

Warning signs

You might see an unexpected change in your credit scores or an account you don’t recognize on your credit report or debt collection notices or a court judgment against you.

The best way to prevent it is to freeze your credit. A freeze blocks access to your credit reports, protecting against scammers’ attempts to open fraudulent accounts. You have to contact each of the three credit bureaus individually.

There is no charge for a credit freeze and it doesn’t affect your credit score and you can remove the freeze if you are planning to make a large purchase such as a car and the company needs to check your credit. You can then put the freeze back on so scammers are unable to get your financial information.

Children Identity Theft

“Do you know children are subject to identity theft? Criminals want a child’s identity, simply for the Social Security number. Once they have the security number, then they fabricate the year on their date of birth to be old enough to apply for credit, which is 18. So now you have a 12-year-old who doesn’t realize they have any credit built because they don’t. And they go to apply for a college student loan and get denied because they have $300,000 in debt. That usually is because a family member had access to their information and it happens in a lot of households with divorce, or relatives that are having a hard time making ends meet,” Shallcross explained.

You can actually get your child’s credit report through three major credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

So you can apply for your child’s credit report as the parent or guardian. And you can get that to make sure someone isn’t utilizing their data to build credit accounts.

Social media and the web

Shallcross said that social media is also a place where people can become the victim of identity theft.

“You know who you’re connecting with? Well, you think you do because not everybody’s your friend. They like to call everyone that’s in the contact bracket a friend. Not everyone is a friend, and you don’t always know the friends of your friend or who they shared it with. So sometimes we go down that hole we think well, it’s OK. We know who they are, but you don’t.”

When a loved one passes, don’t put too much personal information in the obituary and if they were living alone in the home, check the mailbox to remove any mail that comes. Dishonest individuals will watch for the mail to come so they can take it out of the box as soon as the mail carrier delivers.

Are you aware that if there’s a reboot or a new version or an update of anything on that site, most often the privacy settings go back and revert to the original setting, which is open and public. You need to be alerted to that. And you need to go in and double check and reset those privacy standards.

For more information on how to protect yourself go to: www.attorneygeneral.gov.