Fraudsters could use your lost or stolen driving licence to hire cars for YEARS without you ever knowing
FRAUDSTERS could be pretending to be you for up to 10 YEARS if they manage to get hold of your driving licence.
Your licence number is never cancelled if a card is lost or stolen and is just replicated on a replacement.
That means lost licences still appear to be legitimate documents until they reach the expiry date - which could be up to a decade a later.
It means scammers could make a copy with a new photo then use it to hire cars in your name or use it as proof of address at banks.
Dishonest motorists, who may actually have a driving ban, could use your licence to hire a car in your name - especially concerning given the rise last year of terror attacks using hire cars.
That makes lost licences valuable for crooks who will pay up to £16 on the black market.
It's a major issue too as careless Brits are wasting £19million a year by losing licences.
In the last year, nearly one million Brits had to pay £20 for replacement driving licences after losing their ID.
RAC spokesman Pete Williams warned against the dangers of a lost licence falling into the wrong hands.
Williams said: "Firstly, (if you have lost your licence) you should report it to the police and then contact the DVLA to obtain a replacement but as it is simply a visual reference and not a card that must be scanned or has a chip – then effectively it could continue to be mis-used until the date it expires.
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"Effectively they cannot cancel it. You just get a replacement card with a the same driver licence number – so two people could be using the ‘same’ licence.
"The obvious thing would be for a criminal to use your licence to obtain a hire car.
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"It would be wise to keep a safe note of your driver licence number and/or a photo of the card itself."
The DVLA said the driving licence is a secure document and has security features and safeguards in place to stop the picture being changed.
It also claimed it can tell if the licence is the most recently issued and the number alone isn't enough for fraudsters to access or change information on its driver record database.