The Identity Theft Assistance Center has recently shown that identity thieves have begun focusing on individuals with good credit so that they can go after substantial home equity lines of credit. The FBI released their annual mortgage fraud report in April of this year and it unveils home equity credit fraud as an “emerging scheme” in the declining real estate and mortgage market.
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A recent study by the University of Michigan has found that the majority of 214 US financial institutions web sites are not as secure as their customers may think. Many customers use “bogus” sites placed out there by hackers and don’t realize it. This means that many need to check to see whether or not they are a victim of this type of scam. With today’s technology, it is easier than ever to steal the identity of an unsuspecting internet user and use it long before they realize it. The results of the study are being presented at a security conference, however, the banks will not be identified. The process used by these banks to “securely login” their users are actually transmitting social security numbers that can be determined by an outside user. So far the best protection against this would be to log directly on to the institutions website and not to use any links that are sent to you in emails.

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