PAN stands for Permanent Account Number and is the most important financial identity of an Indian citizen. This means that to avail of any financial assistance or service in India, you would need to have a PAN card in your name. Such activities can be opening a bank account, applying for a loan, opening your stock trading account, etc. Such things are counted as the most confidential things to an individual.

But on the other side, multiple news about frauds in loans, fake bank accounts have become very common in today’s digital world. Not just that, such activities lead to a very painful situation to the ones who become end victims of these.

1. A very serious flaw lies in the technicality of the PAN card itself. When retrieving details of a person using their PAN number for verification, the NSDL doesn’t return the photograph of the PAN holder. Due to this, someone can just morph your PAN cards with other’s photos carefully and they would still get away with.
2. Once a fraudster creates a synthetic identity out of your PAN details, they can try opening a bank account by using counterfeited address proof and might use the account for malicious purposes.
3. Similarly, loans can be applied in your name by someone else once they create a synthetic ID using your PAN and in the end, you’ll be responsible for paying off the loan. 
4. Such stolen identity can also be used to get a Credit card issued in your name which will be used by someone else and the onus of card bill payment will be on you. It will most likely impact your credit score.
5. And if someone gets to know about your personal details then with your PAN information, several other monetary frauds can be done in your name.

In most of the cases, the person whose identity is stolen has to bear all the fraud loans taken in their name by someone. Even if the fraud is proved, the victim has to go through a lot of hassle in order to get their financial records clear. 

How does such an individual detail like PAN details get in the hands of fraudsters? The answer is simple, frequent data breaches in varieties of institution holding such financial data of people. This hacked data is then sold on the DarkWeb at really affordable price range from where any person can buy it using Bitcoin.

Well, that’s where IDFence can come handy. It monitors your Debit Card, Credit Card numbers, Bank Accounts, PAN, Email Ids,  on Dark Web, illegal theft forums, etc 24/7 and sends you a notification whenever it detects your information available on such wrong places. 

That’s all from us today. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to get information about data breaches, daily tips to keep your personal information secure, and much more at your inbox. And most importantly, STAY HOME STAY SAFE.