Occurrences of online identity theft incidents have increased significantly with financial industry adopting online services and digitalization. Cyber criminals constantly target banking and insurance databases to get access to sensitive information of customers for financial gain. Successful identity theft would lead to loss of money from bank as well as other investment accounts. As data breach activities are becoming more sophisticated and harder to identify, we must undertake immediate precautions for preventing identify theft.

Here are some ways to prevent us from identity theft and falling victim to cyber scam:

• Never reveal personal information regarding account logins, OTPs or card numbers. Financial organizations would never ask for a customer’s personal account data or other sensitive details.
• Credit ratings need to be checked at a regular basis. Cyber criminals often grant themselves loans on behalf of other individual’s identity. Regular checking of credit ratings would show information of recent loans in the report.
• By logging in the income tax website and using Annual Information Statement or AIS, one can keep track about a taxpayer’s complete information for a financial year. AIS can be used for gathering detailed description about the taxpayer’s personal information such as income, tax details, financial transactions, bank account details and information of large purchases. Any anomaly in these activities would be immediately noticed by the user.
• Regular checking of online transactions is absolutely necessary for preventing identity theft. Cyber criminals often target internet banking activities and online credit card usage. Therefore, one should keep track of banking as well as mutual fund transactions to identify suspicious activity.
• Avoid revealing sensitive information and personal details on social media platforms as these can be easily viewed by others. Cyber criminals would easily retrieve personal information without any difficulty from social media platforms.

Identity theft is no doubt a serious issue in the modern digital world. However, careful observation and quick thinking would prevent majority of such incidents from occurring.

For any further information regarding identity theft or other cybercrime activities and protection, visit our website www.primeinfoserv.com or contact us at info@primeinfoserv.com. We will be happy to help as a CERT-In empanelled auditor to safeguard your digital landscape.