I appreciate the suggestions to opt out of things, but I still want to know: Do people going through my garbage actually have a likely chance of getting a credit card with my SSN?
Granted, there are many that can look up my SSN on their database. But are they really going over to my house to search my garbage? What examples do we have of this?
They have to change the address in order to get the card. Does the CC company accept this?
I’d like to know of examples of people who have used their knowledge of someone’s SSN to go to their house and get a CC application out of the trash. Especially when it’s really obvious that a stranger is searching through someone’s trash for letters, and not recycling.
The point of my query is that it is becoming more and more annoying to shred these things. (You have to open the letter, and whatnot.) I think that if I just pile them up and take them to the corner bus top trashcan every month or so, no one who knows my SSN will ever come across them.
Committing credit card fraud is identity theft, plain and simple. All that remains is how well a thief leverages a successful credit card fraud into something bigger.
Assuming someone’s identity is not difficult. It’s like putting together a 500-piece puzzle. Of the missing pieces the mark does not provide via dumpster diving and not shredding may be inferred up to a point. Then it is a simple process of playing on human nature to fill in the few missing pieces. The FTC Identity Theft web site has more information.
Sorry Mangeorge, but I’m stubborn—er, obstinate—as ever. And I’m serious.
I’ve been waiting for someone to figure this out for themselves, thus saving me a half page of editing my typos. But no such luck. So here goes:
The guy takes his application, rips it up, tapes it back together, fills it out with a change of address to his parents’ house, mails it in, waits a few weeks, then gets a card in his name which he activates from his cell phone. He mentions now he might go out and get a fur coat or Roomba because it’s like free money.
I would like to point out this was NOT a fraudulant credit card application.
I was HIS application. He filled it in with HIS information, especially HIS SSN . Sent the card to HIS family house. (Think he ever lived there? He’s young.) Called them and activated on HIS cell phone.
I would have been impressed if he had, say, sent in his neighbor’s application and gotten a card. At least he could explain how he got the SSN.