Unseen Money 5: Stealing your identity—bit by bit

Having your identity stolen is a catastrophe. You can lose your reputation, your credit rating, your money, your home or even be accused of fraud yourself.To victims, ID theft feels like a single, earth-shattering event. But it’s likely that the hacker has been stealing different aspects of your identity over time.Your name, address, email address, phone number, bank account number, passport number, medical records and log-in credentials are all valuable bits of information to hackers. Combined, they may be enough for a digital hit on you and your bank account.In the latest Unseen Money podcast, Timur Yunusov and I explore the “personally identifiable information” or “PII” that enables hackers to impersonate and rob us.PII is now traded amongst fraudsters as a commodity. But what kind is most valuable to criminals? Where do they get it? How do they use it in scams? Once we’ve lost our PII, is there anything we can do?Listen on for more.