OVERVIEW
Target audience: McGill faculty, students and staff
When your personal information is compromised, you become vulnerable to identity theft. This article provides information about identity theft and ways to protect yourself.
In this article:
What is identity theft?
Identity theft occurs when someone acquires your personal and confidential information in order to impersonate you and engage in fraud. Information such as your full name, Social Insurance Number (SIN), date of birth and mother's maiden name may be all that a thief requires to open up a new bank account in your name, take out a car loan or mortgage, or empty your bank account.
How can my identity be stolen?
Thieves use several methods to steal your personal and confidential information, which include:
- Dumpster Diving: Looking through trash to find bills and other documents containing your personal information.
- Skimming: The theft of credit/debit card numbers during transactions using a special storage device.
- Phishing: The thieves pretend to be financial institutions or companies and send spam or pop-up messages to get you to reveal your personal information.
- Stealing: The theft of wallets and purses, mail (including bank and credit card statements, pre-approved credit offers), cheques, tax information and personnel records.
- Pretexting: The use of false pretenses to obtain your personal information from you or your financial institutions, telephone companies and other sources.
- Data breaches: attackers gain unauthorized access to systems and harvest the personal and confidential information they find. This fresh data is usually combined with other stolen data to create comprehensive profiles of individuals, which are then sold online to cybercriminals and other nefarious individuals.
How can my personal information be used?
Once your information has been obtained, a thief can commit any of the following types of fraud:
Credit card
- A thief may open up new credit cards in your name using only your Social Insurance Number (SIN). In some cases, they may obtain credit approval under your name even if it is misspelled!
- The thief may then change the mailing address attached to your name so that you will not be alerted to the charges accumulating on the account.
Phone or utilities
- Your name may be used to open a new cell phone account or obtain utilities such as electricity and cable TV.
- An attacker can impersonate you and transfer your mobile phone number by assigning it to a new SIM card that they control, an attack known as “sim swapping”. With that, they can potentially take control of any of your accounts that have been set up to send two-factor authentication codes or recovery codes to your phone via text message or calls.
Financial
- Your bank account may be emptied because of identity theft.
- Your personal information can be used to take out loans under your name.
Other
- Thieves may also use your Social Insurance Number to get a job.
- A criminal may provide your name to police during an arrest.
How can I help minimize my risk?
No one is immune from identity theft. However, you can take steps to safeguard your personal information:
- Monitor your credit report regularly.
- You are entitled to a free credit report from the Government of Canada.
- On your credit report:
- Check for any accounts that you did not open - this could be a sign of identity theft.
- Ensure that your information is up to date by filling out a revision form.
- On your credit report:
- You are entitled to a free credit report from the Government of Canada.
- Protect your Social Insurance Number (SIN).
- Do not carry your SIN card in your wallet, store it somewhere safe.
- When asked to provide your SIN ask why it is needed, how it will it be used and stored.
- Do not use your SIN as a piece of ID.
- Do not answer unexpected requests for personal information: If you did not initiate contact with an institution, avoid disclosing any personal information when asked to confirm information already on file.
- Dispose of and store your documents securely.
- Purchase a paper shredder and shred all financial and confidential documents.
- Avoid leaving your receipts at an ABM/ATM, gas pump, store, etc.
- Cut up ID, bank or credit cards (even unused ones) before throwing them away. Make sure to also confirm with the provider that they have been deactivated.
- Do not share your personal information online.
- Never provide confidential information through email, text message or messaging apps, chatrooms, web pages, forums, social media or any other online conversation platform.
