Special report Fraudsters quite happy to get their hands dirty going through your bin
nlillitos@thekmgroup.co.uk They’ll peel off every vital piece of personal information.
Your rubbish bin is a favourite target for ‘identity’ fraudsters and a good ally is an inexpensive shredder, say Maidstone police and council officials.
Criminals are no longer after your wallet. They want personal information on you, using all sorts of scams from the bin, to the phone, to the internet. Bin identity theft is rife. And they’re quite happy to get their hands dirty with organised gangs paying others to bring them your rubbish worthy of their attention, say crime experts.
New ways to steal personal documents keep coming to light. One was recently revealed at Maidstone Crown Court when fraudster David Donkor taped over the letter box of a home in Tunbridge Wells to divert banking information into a temporary container which he then removed.
A bank card ordered by Donkor, later sentenced to two and a half years in jail, arrived at the property in Albion Road after he was arrested.
A spokesman for Maidstone Borough Council said: “The borough has 62,000 homes with individual or shared bins. Our advice is always to remove addresses before putting anything into our green recycling bins. There is no need to shred the whole document.
“We always look to work with the police and other partners as necessary.”
Fraud against individuals is now estimated to cost around £6bn a year in the UK and cases of it increase at Christmas.
Thieves use a variety of techniques, including sending letters which purport to be from the victim’s bank, from other reputable organisations, or even from the police.
And if they gain enough information from their victims they can take out loans, make home buying agreements or enter into larger contracts in the individual’s name.
Despite the threats, over a third of people in Britain don’t shred old financial documents, says new research just out from Equifax, security and identity fraud experts.
Key findings revealed 17% put old financial documents in the bin or for recycling, 12% store them in a ‘safe place’, 5% use other methods such as burning while 65% shred their documents.
“Many consumers are being quite naive in how they protect their identity – many simply don’t realise just how little information fraudsters need to steal their identity,” said a spokesman from Equifax.