Cape Town – Criminals were becoming more resourceful in stealing people’s identities, the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service said on Wednesday, calling on the public to take greater care in protecting their identities.
Dealing with a mountain of debt accumulated by a criminal who had stolen your identity was the last thing a consumer wanted to deal with, yet, this was the growing reality for many South Africans who had fallen victim to identity theft.
Figures released recently estimated that identity theft cost South Africa over R1 billion each year.
“We are not in a position to peg an accurate value to these crimes in South Africa, however, we agree that the cost of identity theft and fraud to businesses and members of the public could certainly be at this level,” said Carol McLoughlin, executive director of the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS).
Speaking to African News Agency on Wednesday, McLoughlin said a number of organisations belonged to SAFPS and reported cases of identity theft and fraud.
The type of cases which were reported, McLoughlin told ANA, “are largely instances where an innocent person’s details are used to open accounts and apply for credit”.
She said identity theft was a global phenomenon, and it was not only South Africa that was impacted negatively by these types of crime.
Commenting on the rising incidence of identity theft in South Africa, McLoughlin said: “I believe that it is a sign that people are being tempted to committing identity theft and fraud to lay their hands on extra income in order to try and cope with the financial pressures as a result of unemployment and the rising cost of living.”
According to statistics provided by SAFPS, the rise in identity theft had exploded in recent years but just of late had started to show a slowdown. A graph showed that over the five years between 2009-2013, cases of identity theft and fraud which people had reported to SAFPS had increased by 265%.
McLoughlin explained that the orange bars on the graph represented cases where the information of criminals who impersonated someone was listed on the SAFPS database by SAFPS members. The blue bars indicated the number of filed cases by victims of identity theft and fraud.
The graph, said McLoughlin, showed a tapering off of the number of cases reported in 2014. This showed that for the first time, this type of crime was showing a reverse trend since 2009.
“During the first four months of 2015, SAFPS experienced a 19% decrease in victim filings and we are now averaging about 224 cases reported per month, compared to an average of 277 cases per month in 2014.”
However, the downward trend in reported cases of identity theft did not mean people should let their guards down.
McLoughlin said criminals were becoming increasingly resourceful and “use so many different types of scams and methods to get their hands on people’s personal information”.
She said due to this resourcefulness and the sophisticated means with which criminals carried out the illegal activities, it was “extremely difficult to pinpoint any particular type of identity theft”.
Two types of identity theft which appeared to be on the rise were phishing scams and hacking attacks, she added.
“We need to do more to raise public awareness about these crimes, and these criminals must be brought to book,” she said. “It is very difficult to track them down as they are essentially operating as ‘ghosts’ who steal people’s personal information and hide behind the identity of these innocent victims when they commit these crimes.”
More people needed to be aware of what they could do to prevent identity theft from happening to them, as “becoming a victim of identity theft can be a very traumatic and costly experience in view of the fact that the person has to take all the necessary steps to prove his or her innocence”.
Steps consumers could take to protect their identity, included applying for Protective Registration with SAFPS on their website if their ID book was lost or stolen, making use of biometric solutions provided by companies that enable them to protect their identities, and to subscribe to credit bureaux which provided them with real-time notifications when an enquiry was made on their personal credit profile.
Consumers also needed to ensure that all important documents were kept in a safe place, that documents with vital information was shredded and to ensure that they were alert when withdrawing money from the ATM or swiping their cards on card machines.
ANA