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The SIN is a nine-digit number that you need to work in Canada or to receive government benefits. Government officials use SIN to track someone’s income and taxes owed. The CRA said Monday that SINs were lost over a six-hour period during a data breach. It did not say whether other information was lost with the SINs.

Dan Williams, senior call-taker supervisor at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, says the SIN is not valuable to a crook on its own.

“It’s very rare that we’ll hear from somebody that his SIN was used with someone else’s name or a fake name. If all that was lost [from the CRA] was just a collection of SINs, from what we see, it would be appear that they wouldn’t be able to get much,” Mr. Williams says. “It’s name, date of birth, SIN — when [crooks] have all of that, then it’s easy for them to apply for cellphones, credit cards, the whole nine yards.”

In 2013, there were 19,473 identity fraud victims who reported $11-million in losses, according to the Anti-Fraud Centre.

Identity thieves are looking for your name, your date of birth, SIN, address, mother’s maiden name, username and password for online services, driver’s license number, bank account numbers, etc. They collect it in a number of ways, whether through dumpster diving, hacking or stealing it from other sources (government agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies, mortgage brokers, etc.).

“What we deal with is account takeovers where [a thief is] hopping on someone’s financial profile and taking it over,” Det. Nichol says. “If I have temporarily taken over your bank accounts, I can deposit forged or altered cheques into your bank account, then [steal it] either through withdrawals or transfers…in which case, you’re left holding the bag.”