Reply to: Companies House contributing to identity theft

[Jeebo72]

Unfortunately you now need to do this

Been through it all ...

[SueEllen]

Having just been the victim of identity fraud where all they used was my name, address and DOB, with someone else's bank details, I can safely say it's a right royal pain in the butt!!! It's caused me no end of bother, time, and very slight financial pain.

Unfortunately you now need to do this

[Jeebo72]

Having just been the victim of identity fraud where all they used was my name, address and DOB, with someone else's bank details, I can safely say it's a right royal pain in the butt!!! It's caused me no end of bother, time, and very slight financial pain.

[Clare@InTouch]

The whole duplicate NI number thing is quite scary really. The figures I've seen, although a few years old now, are:

2001 2,539

2002 2,418

2003 2,533

2004 1,896

2005 1,991

2006 1,984

House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 17 Sep 2007 (pt 0029)

Worth noting that if you have a UTR too, so you file a tax return, I doubt you'd have a problem as there would be a further level of checking.

[SueEllen]

Do you? Do you have information about it?

Quick google search revealed this and this

[d000hg]

Governments and unique Id's - now that's an oxymoron - do you have any idea how many duplicated NI numbers are knocking around the country?

Do you? Do you have information about it?

What about passport numbers?

[Clare@InTouch]

Age discrimination is ripe in the world of job seeking.
If the age of the company director is available then if it happens that the director is the only employee of the company, the employer may not give the contract based on the director's age.

Even worse is some of the bad agencies will look at your age and rule your company out before even the potential employer gets to see your skills and that's what we are talking about!

I have approached my MP about the age information at least to omitted from company house's information but no luck there.

It is really terrible!
Hope they do something about that soon.

Surely the potential employer/client company would have met and interviewed the candidate, in which case they'd have a good idea about their age anyway......

[abbash]

Company house should disclose age of the director who happens to be the only employee

Age discrimination is ripe in the world of job seeking.
If the age of the company director is available then if it happens that the director is the only employee of the company, the employer may not give the contract based on the director's age.

Even worse is some of the bad agencies will look at your age and rule your company out before even the potential employer gets to see your skills and that's what we are talking about!

I have approached my MP about the age information at least to omitted from company house's information but no luck there.

It is really terrible!
Hope they do something about that soon.

[xoggoth]

As CIT said, such information is also useful to people who want to avoid being scammed. Looked into an investment a while back that looked a bit too good to be true and found online a) it had been going for too short a time to have any credentials and b) a founding director had been involved in a previous wonderful opportunity that left a lot of people out of pocket.

[tractor]

...

Governments and unique Id's - now that's an oxymoron - do you have any idea how many duplicated NI numbers are knocking around the country? Here's a clue - neither does the government.

That's why a unique id could never work.

[CloudWalker]

I don't even put my DOB on facebook

[Clare@InTouch]

Just an update on this - Companies House will shortly no longer be showing the full date of birth for a director, in an effort to reduce ID theft.

Page 17 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...s-response.pdf

A few more changes detailed there too, in regard to annual returns, being able to add a trading address to the public register, and a faster striking off process.

[ELBBUBKUNPS]

I know of x 3 people in the last 2 months all company directors who have such fraud take place and they believe the fraudsters used company / house info. In all cases bank accounts were opened and they only got wind when activiation codes were posted to them.

I know its been happening for a while due to the info company houses and other websites have but it does seem to be picking up again.

[DannyR]

Unfortunately the unique ID isn't enough. I was looking up details of someone I used to know, and found that he now has 4 director IDs. Same name, DOB and address, but the records of his many companies opened and later closed due to not filing accounts are not linked. The only way to see this is to check all of his director IDs separately.

Interesting but IMHO it's a Companies House bug. Companies House has everything it needs to uniquely identify a director before company accounts are filed.
Also, regarding the unique director ID, IMHO this ID should also not something being made official / public but solely used by Companies House for their internal database as such an ID could probably be misused as well. A simple link from one director to all his/her past and present companies (including the companies which accounts haven't been filed) should be enough.

It is not difficult to find this stuff anyway, you could just buy a mailing list of thousands (or tens of thousands) of names & addresses.

Well it's not difficult for someone to break into your home, but you still close your door, don't you? Think a few seconds why you do it.

And Clare already told you, you should not use your home address as your business address. Why isn't it your responsibility to avoid disclosing information you don't want to?

Companies House has recently (a few years ago) made it possible to not publicly disclose the home address and it is indeed a good thing. In the news article, the guy whose identity was stolen had his home address displayed publicly because at the time he created his company this information was not yet hidable.

[d000hg]

I want public bodies like Companies House, local councils, etc... to avoid helping scammers and criminals stealing people's identity. Is is too much to ask?

If you want to make things open, information has to be available.

It is not difficult to find this stuff anyway, you could just buy a mailing list of thousands (or tens of thousands) of names & addresses.

And Clare already told you, you should not use your home address as your business address. Why isn't it your responsibility to avoid disclosing information you don't want to?