What Are the Most Common Forms of Identity Theft?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Dave Andrews and today I'm going to talk to you about the most common forms of identity theft. The most common form if identity theft is called credit theft. This is where somebody has somehow managed to get a hold of your information, your name, your address and your social security number and they have applied for some type of credit like a credit card or a bank account, something like that and they have gained access to finances using your name. This is a very serious problem and one of the ways that it actually occurs and most often, is when you're purchasing something on the Internet through a site that is not secure. Basically what's going to happen is as you type in your credit card numbers, those numbers are transmitted out through the Internet. Now if you're going to a site that's very obscure, not going like to the major sites like PayPal or Google Check Out, sites like that which we know are very secure, basically your information is transmitted plain text over the Internet. And that means that anybody who's listening on to that signal will be able to retrieve your credit card number out of that information. One way to prevent this is make sure when you're checking out from a site that it's a reputable site. You're going to want to look for a VeriSign logo on that page and also you'll see a little, a lock right next to the name of the website in the address bar. That's telling you that what you are transmitting is encrypted and that's one way to protect your credit card and all of your other valuable information about your identity. My name's Dave Andrews and I've just talked to you about the most common forms of identity theft."