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MORE ON HOW IDENTITY FRAUD OCCURS There are different ways that criminals can access your personal information. They include identity fraud scams, where criminals influence consumers to
expose sensitive data, often by misrepresenting themselves. They may do so through phishing attempts, where scammers send emails “fishing” (phishing) for personally identifying information
and/or including links containing malware that can infect your device and steal data. These commonly are in the form of impersonation scams, where you’ll receive calls, emails or texts
spoofing, among others, a government agency, law enforcement, a delivery service, your bank, or a toll road service. The impostor will attempt to elicit your Social Security number, account
number or other sensitive information. The report warns that texts are increasingly fraud criminals’ favorite way to reach potential victims: 54 percent of survey respondents who experienced
identity fraud in 2024 were first contacted by text, up from 49 percent in 2023. And older people lose more money to these crimes than their younger counterparts, in part because they tend
to have more to lose: The Federal Trade Commission found that last year, among the victims who included their ages in their complaints, adults in their 70s reported a median of $1,000 stolen
through fraud, compared with a median of about $417 reported by those in their 20s. There’s also more straightforward identity theft — unauthorized access to personal information — which
can occur without a scam or identity fraud. It’s commonly carried out through large-scale data breaches of online platforms, where cybercriminals hack into a company’s systems and steal
sensitive consumer data. Sometimes they encrypt the captured data and request a ransom for its unencryption and release. There were 3,158 data breaches last year — about the same as in 2023
(3,205) but far higher than the 1,801 breaches in 2022, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. In the past few months, they’ve included, among many others, the leaking of personal
information of more than 3 million people who’ve applied to New York University over the years and the theft of more than one million records from Community Health Center, a
Connecticut-based health care provider. HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM IDENTITY FRAUD KEY STEPS: BE MORE AWARE OF WHAT INFORMATION YOU’RE SHARING AND WHERE YOU’RE SHARING IT. Before offering
personal information requested by a business (or anyone), ask: How do you protect my personal information? Why do you need this information? As Pitt puts it, “Think about verifying instead
of trusting. This applies no matter what they say or who it appears to come from.” She adds, “If I get emails or text messages from my mother that have a link or something odd that I have to
click on, I always call and ask her first, ‘Did this come from you?’”