What damage can person/s do if they have your passport number and visa control number?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 8 Aug, 2023
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The information page of a passport is an identity document and contains several fragments of personal information that could be useful to an identity thief: your full legal name, date of birth, photograph, etc… Somebody could potentially use that information, along with other details they research about your life and some social engineering, to impersonate you.
And such impersonation need not involve traveling or passports, but could involve obtaining credit in your name, convincing your bank to allow them access to your accounts, tax fraud, or any number of other nefarious activities.
Here’s a simple example: “Hi, Big Global Airline? Yes I can’t get into my account online. No I don’t have access to that email anymore so I can’t reset it. Ok so I can email/fax you a copy of my ID? That’s perfect.” And then you could use their miles to book yourself a last minute flight to Tahiti before the owner notices (or more likely, try sell the miles to someone else). While some airlines might put more roadblocks in the way of this kind of operation, a thief can simply try someplace else.
It is certainly true that you present your passport to various people during the course of your travels and are not immediately victimized. The average hotel clerk is unlikely to be an identity thief (and if they are, they’re probably after your credit card number). The bigger issue comes if you post the picture online, as potentially anybody could see it. Another common scenario occurs when a database of personal information is breached, as the information can be sold online among criminals. Someone who finds a copy of your passport online and matches it to your social security number which was stolen from your health insurance company last year is well on their way to making a mess out of your life.
A visa also can reveal when you plan to be gone (especially if the duration is limited to the approximate dates of your travel, as some countries do). While it’s unlikely that anybody would see your visa and then decide to break into your home, why help out potential burglars?
So it’s not as though someone can immediately do that much with this information, but it’s a significant piece of the puzzle that someone could use both to obtain more information about you and to exploit it. As a result, it’s best not to share it unnecessarily.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘