IDENTITY THEFT AND ITS’ LONG-LASTING DAMAGE

After putting in the hard work for your business to flourish, some malicious individuals out there are busy planning how to bring you down. While it’s part of business, it gets really difficult to recover from malicious activities. Therefore, it’s crucial to safeguard your business and reputation to ensure no one finds a way to kill it.

Identity theft comes with long-lasting damages that can last between a few days and many years, depending on the type and magnitude of theft. Most importantly, how fast you realise it and put up combating measures dictates how long it would take to recover.

There are varieties of strategies to use to protect your business from identity thieves. But often, these techniques don’t guarantee complete immunisation, giving identity thieves a chance to masquerade as a reputable moving company to gain access to your details. These malicious individuals create scammer websites to trick you carefully and even provide removal quotations. By the time you realise, they’ve swindled plenty of money from you.

It’s critical to learn about the effects of identity theft and what to do to recover faster when it occurs.

What do scammers do?

Identity theft is a common practice these days. A scammer will develop a fake moving company using the real name of a reputable moving company. They then proceed with the provision of removal quotations for you to decide and use the victim’s credit card details to create additional charges.

These scammers can devastatingly damage the name of a reputable moving company that they pose to be. Those affected will post negative reviews on the real company’s website, file complaints with the relevant bodies, or notify the authorities as they try to get compensation.

How do they steal?

Employee Identification Number (EIN), which works like a social security number, is a must-have for all businesses. These numbers are in the public domain, and easily available even online. This automatically becomes a problem, since scammers can easily gain access to them.

Besides, details such as the license number and other registration details are readily available on the business establishment’s wall. With these kinds of essential information, scammers can conveniently create a line of credit in your company’s name. Also, identity thieves are tech savvies who’ve perfected the art of changing the information on the relevant registration files.

Effects of Identity Theft

The devastating effects on the type and magnitude of identity theft; you may be affected in several ways. But first, the emotional toll can be damaging. Scammers assume your true identity which makes it quite difficult to recover. They even affect the removal quotations of the reputable moving company they assume to be.

Once the scammers access your name, they’ll do various things with it. They’ll open new credit lines, create their removal quotations, along with committing other offenses like fraud, leaving you feeling anxious and unsafe.

Sometimes, it’s an uphill task to prove if the identity theft took place, and this can be so frustrating.

More potential effects:

Damaging your credit: When identity thieves access your National Insurance Number (NIN), they use it to open new credit accounts and don’t pay, ruining your credit history. This can hurt your ability to borrow and reduce your job prospects.
Tax debt: Scammers can assume your identity by stealing your NIN, apply for jobs, and not pay taxes, leaving you in huge debt. Fraudsters can also file returns in your name, submit fake information to get refunds and leave you dealing with the situation.
Criminal record: Scammers can use stolen information to commit various crimes, and submit your information to the authorities when arrested. You’ll end up dealing with the crimes you didn’t commit.
Wasting your time and losing more money: It takes years to recover from identity theft. You may end up spending more money because of the expenses resulting from identity theft.
Quick tips to prevent identity theft

Regularly running credit, removal quotations checks on your reputable moving company
Checking for false reviews
Going through your monthly credit card and bank statements keenly
Creating google alerts for your company
Searching your company’s name on Google from time to time.
Conclusion

Beware of identity theft to protect your business from malicious individuals. As mentioned above, scammers can easily find your details and other private information and use it for various things. While it’s difficult to immunise yourself fully against identity theft, it helps to try different ways of protecting your business information. Besides, you should stay on top of everything, to know what to do, in case of an identity theft attempt.