In reality, the number of individuals holding property of such value in the country does not exceed forty, but for hundreds of the country’s citizens, a theoretical ‘debt’ of a hundred million euros is an extra guarantee of financial security.
Growing online crime statistics indicate that contemporary criminals are increasingly stealing not physical items or wallets but seek ways to appropriate people’s funds through the online domain – emptying bank accounts, taking loans, and performing lease purchases for expensive items. Thus, identity protection is becoming increasingly important: ensuring adequate personal document protection, and electronic banking access codes. Nevertheless, anything can happen in life: documents can be stolen, access codes lured out or found out otherwise. To prevent such incidents from causing further financial harm, every client of the credit bureau is automatically offered personal identity protection.
Upon seeing an entry regarding debt in the millions, creditors know to double-check
To protect clients from fraudulent loans, the credit bureau Creditinfo Lietuva makes use of a measure that has already gained success in the world – every new client is “attributed” a theoretical 100 million-euro debt. Alongside it is set an explanation that it is identity protection offered by the credit bureau.
“Usually, any bank or credit company – loan provider, car, household appliance or electronics seller – will be prompted by such an entry to further review the customer’s capacity to uphold commitments in time. While the customer’s creditability is reviewed, they are asked for extra confirmation on whether they truly wish to take the new loan. The review is performed to ensure that personal identity data is truly used by the owner themselves,” Aurimas Kačinskas, the head of the credit bureau, describes the service’s operation.
According to him, if fraudsters request the loan, usually the fraud comes to light at this stage. If the person does confirm they truly want to form a loan or lease-purchase agreement, they can within minutes replace the hundred million euro in debt with an entry that reflects their real creditability, which allows obtaining the loan.
Depending on needs, the service can be toggled for an unlimited number of times at any moment. And so when you wish to resume the protection, the Creditinfo system returns the one hundred million euro ‘debt’ – the entry regarding it will continue performing its mission of ensuring that no one could commit to further credit without the individual’s knowledge through stolen identity data.
Identity theft is a growing problem in many countries. Last year, the global research centre Juniper reported that in 2019, the damage caused by cyber-attacks had reached 2 trillion dollars, and around 700 million individuals fall prey to online crime. The research shows that more than half the breaches are performed through mobile devices.
“Customers often don’t even know their computer or smartphone have been breached and important personal data has been stolen in an incident. Thus, we noted that the need for comprehensive identity data protection continues to grow,” A. Kačinskas says.
Currently, the service “Protect Your Identity” (Apsaugok Tapatybę) is used by more than five hundred individuals. The protection is automatically enabled for every client of Mano Creditinfo who chooses the annual plan Planas MAN, which allows reviewing credit history reports for an unlimited number of times.
