One of the oldest methods of obtaining personal and financial information is to sort through someone’s trash. As disgusting as it may be, this is a highly effective method of obtaining valuable information. Similar to dumpster diving, a thief may actually open a mailbox and remove the mail. Victims with roadside mailboxes are more susceptible to this fraud.

Credit card bills, phone bills, statements, unsolicited loan information, and more contain very valuable personal information that can be used for account takeovers and application fraud.

For some of the pieces of mail, a thief only needs to respond to the notices and notify the company of a new address. Once they have provided this information, they begin the process of using the victim’s line of credit.

In other cases, a thief may actually approach the post office and pretend to be the victim. The thief will then attempt to change the mailing address of the person. In this way, the thief may be able to buy a little more time before the victim and the authorities are alerted to the crime.