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Understanding Identity Theft

What can identity thieves do with my personal information?

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Linda Sherry
Director, National Priorities, Consumer Action
http://www.consumer-action.org  
 

Linda Sherry, Consumer Action’s director of national priorities and one of the organization’s chief spokespersons, joined the San Francisco-based national consumer education and advocacy group in 1994 from a background as a weekly newspaper reporter.

Consumer Action (www.consumer-action.org), founded in 1971, has a national reputation for free multilingual consumer education on personal finance issues.

Sherry, who moved to Washington, DC, in August 2004 to establish an office for Consumer Action, is responsible for the organization’s national advocacy work and for the research and writing of Consumer Action’s free educational publications and web site content. Her recent projects for Consumer Action include publications on home buying, credit card terms and conditions, bankruptcy, ID theft, Internet privacy, cell phones and investing vs. savings. Sherry is chief surveyor and coordinator of Consumer Action’s popular pricing surveys of rates for credit cards and telephone services. She is the editor of Consumer Action’s newsletter, Consumer Action News.

Sherry has received awards for Consumer Action publications from the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators (Excellence in Consumer Education, 1996, 2000 and 2003) and U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs (1995 National Consumer Week). Sherry serves as a member of the National Consumers League Fraud Alliance steering committee.

Before joining Consumer Action, Sherry was managing editor of AsianWeek in San Francisco from 1991-1994. Previously she was a reporter at The Almanac newspapers in Menlo Park, CA; The New York Times Long Island Section and The East Hampton Star in East Hampton, NY. She was the founding editor of the Sag Harbor Herald, a weekly newspaper in Long Island, NY.

What can identity thieves do with my personal information?

In this video, Linda Sherry details the best ways to prevent identity theft and what you can do if you think your identity has been stolen.

This expert: 28,944 views

This series: 8,862 views

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Id

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Identity

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Fraud

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Internet

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Abuse

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Stolen

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Scam

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Transcripts

Speaker: What can identity thieves do with personal information?

Linda Sherry:There are many things that crooks can do when they get a hold of your personal information. Some of these things include, for instance, a crook could get a driver's license in your name. They could go out drunk driving. They could give that the driver's license that has your name on it to the cop. So that in fact when they got out of prison you would be the one with a criminal record, not the person who is posing as you.

They could open up a bank account in your name. They could pass bad checks all over the place and then leave abandoning the bank account, leaving you to deal with the mess. They could get credit cards in your name. They can then go out and buy all kinds of things and use the credit card in your name, which will end up in the end on your credit report and you'll be asked to pay for all these things, until you are able to prove that you are victim of identity theft.

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