Fraudsters net record £1.4bn from business rip-offs
Private equity firms were warned yesterday to beware of fraudsters after a survey showed businesses suffered a 40% jump in fraud last year. The cost of fraud reached record levels to £1.4bn in 2006, up from £1bn in 2005 said accountants BDO Stoy Hayward.
Call for banks to shred all waste
Shredding sensitive documents reduces the risk of identity theft. Banks should shred all their paper waste to protect customers' personal details, the chair of the parliamentary watchdog on ID fraud has urged.
Sensitive documents found in bin
Scamdirect.com said hundreds of documents were found Personal details and important information have been discarded in a city centre waste bin. The papers, revealing names, addresses and national insurance numbers, were found at the back of a post office in London Road, Southampton.
Identity crisis? What identity crisis?
You can't open a newspaper these days without being confronted with apocalyptic warnings about identity theft. It is apparently Britain's fastest-growing crime, costs the UK economy an estimated £1.7bn a year and is an invisible menace that can cause damage for months before you realise it has happened. FULL ARTICLE
Your identity, lying on the doorstep
Would-be identity thieves no longer need bother rifling through dirty rubbish sacks. A major credit reference agency is linked to a promotion that is encouraging householders to leave personal data, including their dates of birth, in unsealed plastic bags on their front doorsteps.
Revenue admits theft of staff IDs
"Virulent" organised fraud in the tax credit system is the result of illicit access to government payroll records, the UK's Revenue chief has said. HM Revenue & Customs executive director David Varney told MPs as many as 13,000 civil servants' personal information had been stolen.
DWP staff hit by tax credit fraud
Up to 1,500 staff at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had their identities stolen in a tax fraud. Details of staff, including national insurance numbers, have been used to make fake tax credit claims.
UK 'lax' over identity theft
People are leaving themselves wide open to identity theft by not taking proper precautions with their private correspondence, according to a leading criminologist. Professor Martin Gill, of the University of Leicester, interviewed identity thieves to find out how they perpetrated their scams.
Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much
A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security. This is the story of a piece of paper no bigger than a credit card, thrown away in a dustbin on the Heathrow Express to Paddington station.
'I was a victim of ID theft'
A quarter of UK adults say they have had their identity stolen or know a victim of ID fraud, Which? magazine has said. Three BBC News website readers explain what happened to them when their ID was stolen.
One in four 'touched' by ID fraud
Identity theft could lead to theft from your bank account. A quarter of UK adults have had their identity stolen or know someone who has fallen victim to ID fraud, a Which? magazine survey has suggested. Nevertheless, only one in three people said they shredded bills or used different passwords for every account.
Report pinpoints identity fraud streets
The street in central London which is home to the Department of Trade and Industry has been named Britain's number one identity fraud hotspot, while St Albans, Slough and Woking also feature in the UK top 10 outside of London.
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