How Identity Theft Impacts Car Loans In Burlington

How Identity Theft Impacts Car Loans In Burlington

Posted on May 20, 2021

Identity theft is one of the banes of modern life. It’s a low crime akin to home invasion and can have serious impact on your financial wellbeing. While everything can be repaired, this is one area of life where prevention really is better than cure. Our Burlington auto loan team explains how identity theft impacts car loans, and how to prevent it as much as possible.

What is identity theft?

Identity theft is where someone steals elements of your identity and uses it to access credit. For example, they get hold of your date of birth and social security number and pose as you to apply for a loan or credit card.

Once they get credit, the fraudster will keep the money and not make payments.

Guess who the creditor will come looking for when that happens?

How identity theft Impacts Car Loans

The typical motives for identity theft are to take out credit in your name. That will typically be personal loans and credit cards. The fraudster will get as large a loan as possible and as many credit cards as they can. They will max them all out and not make any payments.

To begin with, you’ll be seen as responsible for this and your credit score will take the initial hit. A hit for multiple credit applications at once and a severe hit when the missed payments start rolling in.

Fortunately, once you can prove you were a victim of identity theft, it will all sort itself out and your original credit score should be restored.

While that’s happening, any auto loan application or anything to do with credit will need to go on hold.

How to protect yourself against identity theft

There are several things you can do to protect yourself against identity theft.

• Shred or burn all documents – Shred or burn old bank statements, credit card statements, insurance documents and anything official you don’t need. Anything that could be used as proof of ID with your name and address on.
• Secure your online accounts – Use strong passwords for your online accounts. If those accounts support two-factor authentication, use it. Never share your PINs or passwords and keep your online accounts as secret as possible.
• Never click links in emails – Avoid clicking email links at all costs unless you’re sure of the identity of the sender. Even then, hover the cursor over the link and make sure the actual link is the same as the visible link.
• Always use a firewall, antivirus and malware scanner on computers – Keep your devices secure with a software firewall, antivirus and malware programs. There are lots of very good free options out there.

There are identity monitoring services available that can monitor your credit report and other online sources to any suspicious activity but they usually cost money. Taking basic precautions should protect you from the worst of identity theft.

Contact Unique Chrysler for help, advice and competitive Burlington car finance and leasing.

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