Identity thieves find one out of two of their victims right in the trash! And you may be throwing away valuable papers and not even realize their worth.
BBB’s Lechelle Yates is here with a warning. You’re holding statements from your health insurance company.
A medical statement has a lot valuable information for identity thieves. It has your doctor’s name. It has why you visited them and the patient account number. That’s all a thief needs to steal your medical identity and become you.
Thieves do that by calling your doctor’s office and pretending to be you.The first call could just saying “Hey I’ve moved. Here’s my new address.” And then they call and ask to get a copy of your medical records mailed to them. Now they have everything to become you and use your health insurance
They can go to the doctor, get prescriptions, have surgery. They use up all your benefits and you could be stuck paying for it. And a bigger danger – their health records then get mixed in with yours. In fact 20% of victims say they’ve gotten a wrong diagnosis or treatment because of the confusion about which conditions are theirs and which are the thieves.
So look at each statement carefully to make sure it’s really for your doctor’s visit and then shred it!
Thieves can also use prescriptions. So before you chuck it, use a magic marker and cover up all your information.
Medical identity theft is the fastest growing kind of id theft, but credit card theft is still growing since we have chip cards now. Thieves just changed tactics. Stats show that credit card fraud happened 8 out of 10 times online last year rather than at the register because of the chips. So now fraudsters are just opening new accounts in our names.
And a lot of victims don’t know about the new accounts until they get their credit report or letter from a debt collect. That’s why you want to shred credit card applications and credit statements so they don’t fall in the wrong hands.
BBB’s across the state are helping you with that today. The Greensboro BBB has a free shred event today in the parking lot of the whole foods at the friendly center from 9 to noon.