You receive a letter from a loans company telling you that someone has applied for a loan in your name and the company believe that it wasn’t you, but someone impersonating you who tried to take out that loan.

Now, that sounds worrying and these things do happen, so the letter could be genuine.

However, scammers also use this approach to try to get your personal information – it’s their despicable form of Marketing.

The letter may tell a story about someone impersonating you and may give some accurate information about you – usually taken from the electoral register i.e. name and address.

The letter then goes on to say they will register you on the government CIFAS service to protect you against further such attempts and may include a separate letter telling you about the benefits of CIFAS.

See https://fightback.ninja/cifas-identity-protection-registration/ for further information on CIFAS.

The problem comes if the letter asks for you confidential details e.g. full name, date of birth, email address, full address etc.

Registering on CIFAS will need you to provide such information but do not give it to a company claiming they will register for you.

If you decide you want to register on CIFAS then do so yourself safely and do not give out confidential information to others without being totally sure it is safe to do so.

The letter from the loans company is likely just a scam – they get your information under the false guise of protecting you then will use that information to try to sell you their services or sell the data to other scammers

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.