by Scott Hayden

Created on: March 23, 2009   Last Updated: August 28, 2010

Identity thieves cruise around residential areas late at night looking for open trash cans and dumpsters in order to find bills, receipts and old credit card statements with your name on them. When they do it gives them the ability to impersonate you. Unless you catch on to the fact that there is somebody out there masquerading as you, and quickly, it will be almost impossible to reverse the damage.

Since these criminals make their living by assuming somebody else's identity, everything that is thrown away is like gold. Social Security numbers, PIN numbers and credit card numbers are the types of information they want to get. Identity thieves can park themselves in a good location and wait for somebody to leave trash outside the home the night before a scheduled pick up. Once the person goes back inside, the thief drives by, picks up the trash and drives away — and will sort out the garbage in another location.

Social Security numbers are printed on almost everything, because it's the all purpose identifier that the government uses to keep track of you. When an identity thief gets a hold of this, he/she can perform a variety of activities in your name. The impostor can get a job, rent a home or even get medical treatment because this number lets you do all of these things. An identity thief can sell the number to allow illegal immigrants to enter the country. Unemployment insurance and disability insurance can be collected in your name and without your knowledge. All of this and more are at the fingertips of a skilled identity thief.

Credit card statements can be the biggest trap for the homeowner who doesn't get rid of these bills properly. These pieces of paper have your name, address, credit card number and other vital data on them. An identity thief can easily change the address on those statements so the bills stop coming to you. After a few weeks of getting no bills in the mail, this would be the first tipoff that something is really wrong. The second tipoff would be getting phone calls from creditors, demanding you pay up.

There are lots of other things. Old mobile phone statements or utility bills also have everything an identity thief needs. They can figure out how to open an account in your name and run up huge bills. If they are looking for free heating, electricity or cable television, they can get those, too. These criminals are smart and persistent.

Old or canceled checks can allow identity thieves to spend money that doesn't belong to you. With a little bit of practice they can forge your signature, make counterfeit checks and use them to ruin your credit and reputation. And what about junk mail, the stuff that really isn't valuable? It is to an identity thief, and they can steal this from right under your nose. They may sneak up to a house and snatch this in the morning from a mailbox to make it look like nothing is missing. Shred old bills, statements and other bits of paper you don't need. Better yet, burn all of them. It may encourage an identity thief to move on to somebody who isn't quite so careful.

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