MAGAZINE: On a night out at the pub, could you fall victim to identity theft?

If you thought you were pretty savvy when it comes to making sure your online identity is protected, then a social experiment which saw researchers from Experian head to a pub with the sole intention of finding out as much private info as possible about the punters might make you think twice.
By The Newsroom
Published 30th Jul 2014, 12:02 BST
Could you fall victim to identity theft?Could you fall victim to identity theft?
Could you fall victim to identity theft?

The experiment saw the researchers firstly gather the email addresses of those in the pub for a ‘competition’ and based purely on that they then went out the back to start gathering as much info as they could – so how much did they find out in just a few short minutes? And how safe would your identity have been if you were in the pub that night?

A staggering four million people in the UK have already fallen victim to identity theft; the Experian Victims of Fraud team showed a massive (37%) year-on-year increase in the number of confirmed cases of fraud resolved in 2013 – yet, it appears that many Brits are still falling short of even the basics of online identity protection.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Furthermore, based on a survey of 2,000 UK adults more than a quarter (27%) have shared their full name on a social media website; a quarter their full date of birth (23%); less than 4 in 10 (39%) have different passwords for every online account they use and 20% have a paper or electronic record of their online passwords.

So watch the video to find out how easy it was for the actors to find out personal details within minutes and work out whether you could also be an easy target.