Garlik was founded by Tom Ilube and Mike Harris, who founded
internet bank Egg, and it commissioned research from consultancy
1871 Ltd which uncovered the value of a single fake identity. It
also discovered that lawyers are a main target of ID
fraudsters.
The research found that most people's perceptions of how
identity fraud works are wrong. The fraudster commonly does not
empty bank accounts but applies for new credit as another person so
that that person may not discover for some time that they are being
impersonated.
"The industry of identity theft is much more organised than you
might think, it is actually quite structured," Ilube told OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly technology law
podcast. "There are people who focus their attention on collecting
information, they then sell that information on to people who are
then going to go on and exploit it."
1871 interviewed a number of fraudsters to investigate their
methods and uncovered the £85,000 figure. "It is possible to
quantify how much the average UK citizen is worth to an identity
fraudster," said Ilube.
The Home Office has estimated that ID theft and fraud costs the
UK economy £1.7 billion a year, while Sainsbury's Bank found that
four million people in the UK have had some experience of ID
fraud.
A number of financial services products are emerging which are
designed to deal with the problem. Garlik's first product, Data
Patrol, monitors the web for financial information relating to
customers.
Sainsbury's Bank, which is a joint venture between the
supermarket chain and Halifax Bank of Scotland, provides credit
application alerts so that you know if someone other than you is
applying for credit in your name. It also operates a case
management team service to help you prove that you were not behind
any fraudulent transactions.
"The fraud is really against the bank, it's not against you,
which causes all sorts of problems for you if you're the victim of
ID fraud because it's a very ambiguous position for the police to
be in because the level of support that they can provide you with
is fairly limited because there's been no crime committed against
you," said Don McLeod, credit manager with Sainsbury's Bank.
"We would direct you to our victims of fraud team which is a
dedicated case management team," said McLeod. "They would take your
case on and look to have your file cleared and get your credit
history restored and ensure that all these other loans and
applications that have been made in your name are all cleared and
everything is restored to the position it should be."
Ilube said that lawyers are a particular target for fraudsters
because so much information about them is in the public domain.
"The types of people that are particularly attractive to credit
card fraudsters are lawyers because they tend to be high earning,
they tend to have quite a lot of information about themselves in
the public domain, it's very easy to find names and addresses and
phone numbers," he said.
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