There’s a new form of identity theft that’s rapidly becoming known to law enforcement, institutions and victims. This is synthetic identity theft. In this form of fraud, the criminal doesn’t steal your name; instead, he creates a new, fake identity. If the identity is fake, can it harm you? The answer is yes. In fact, it can be even worse for you.

In today’s networked, organized society, it’s very difficult to create an authentic looking idea out of nothing. Instead, synthetic ID theft perpetrators steal parts of different identities: a Social Security number here, a credit card there. This works because even though you belong to a huge information network that tracks your information, not every part of it is in regular, direct contact with the others. This is necessary for the sake of your privacy. Most people don’t want the government or a financial institution knowing everything about them. That kind of centralized information could be abused by both institutions and by identity thieves themselves.

The fact is that people generate so much information that it’s difficult for any single institution to track it all, even when they ask for that information on a loan form. Workers and computers can identify properly formatted information, however, and can often check to see whether a single piece of information, such as a credit card number, is belongs to something real.

So in a synthetic ID scam, the perpetrator uses this information to get a new loan, or simply uses credit card numbers and other accounts while concealing both his own name and the name of the legitimate account holder. Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t get around the fact that the actual numbers are connected to real people, like you, your family and your friends. These debts eventually get attached to the names that really belong to those credentials. Even if someone uses your Social Security number under a completely fake name, you’ll end up paying for it.