Senior citizens are a lucrative market for identity thieves for three good reasons. First, they are likely to own their homes outright since they have often been paying on their mortgages for quite some time. Secondly, they have had credit for a while, which can boost their scores. Lastly, they may have a lot of money saved up to use during their retirement, making their bank accounts especially promising.
And, since many seniors are home during the day, thieves seize this opportunity to hit them with fraudulent phone calls. In these calls the identity thieves pretend to be representing a company that does legitimate business with seniors. Often, this company is Medicare, the government health insurance provider.
During the calls, thieves tell seniors that they need to replace their Medicare cards because they have expired and ask for bank account information to help them get new ones. One key trigger here is that Medicare cards don’t expire. However, there are many people that have no idea this is the case. The criminals also try to convince the people they call of who they are by offering up the senior’s address or birth date, which they can easily find out through the phone book or public records.
Once a thief has a bank account number and the name associated with it, it’s not too hard for him or her to find out additional information needed to commit more elaborate fraud, such as creating new accounts in the unsuspecting senior’s name. Sometimes the victims don’t find out what’s happened for months because they fail to regularly check their credit reports and do not use a credit monitoring service.
To avoid becoming a victim of this type of scam, every senior needs to know how to recognize a vishing attack, which is a phishing attack perpetrated by phone. They should be skeptical of anyone that calls and asks them to verify personal information, no matter where they say they are calling from. Even if the President of the United States calls, they should say they do not give out such information by phone.
Then, they can call back the organization that supposedly called (in this case, the White House) at a proven, legitimate phone number and ask if the person that called is a real representative and if there is really a problem. Most times, they will get a no. Every once in a while they will get a yes, which is when they should tell the person they’re speaking with that it is not wise to conduct business in this manner since they are only helping identity thieves get away with their practices by confusing consumers.
Almost always, there is a more secure way to remit sensitive information, whether it be the company’s website, certified mail, or best of all, in person. It would be very trite and irresponsible for a person to suspend someone’s account because he or she refuses to give out personal information over the phone. With nearly 10 million Americans falling victim to identity theft each year, it is almost certain that the person who calls would understand. If not, cite the statistic and hang up.
For an added level of security and the peace of mind that identity theft insurance or a service guarantee can provide simply go to our homepage and find the best identity theft protection for you and your family today.