Only in California! A Huntington Beach woman used another woman’s identity to pay for breast implants and liposuction. At first glance, it’s a laughable story. But imagine being the woman who has to prove that she wasn’t the augmentation recipient! Remember, with identity theft, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Medical identity theft will take us to new and embarrassing depths in order to prove that we are innocent. It will give new meaning to the phrase “bearing witness”. And it prompts the question of why we don’t have a set of universal rules that govern our personally identifying information?

On a related note, I recently became involved with the Santa Fe Group which published an excellent white paper informally known as the Identity Theft Bill of Rights. Registering for a download of the paper is well worth your time – it does an excellent job of summarizing the identity theft issues that we, as Americans, face in the coming years. It includes discussions about modifying language in HIPAA to protect against medical identity theft crimes similar to and far more serious than the Huntington Beach case.

As our population grows older on the shoulders of the baby boomers, medical identity theft and its cousins will become ever more prevalent and damaging. Help us fight for our identity rights by getting involved. Start by registering for a webinar put on by the Santa Fe Group called:

Victims’ Rights: Fighting Identity Crime on the Front Lines

Here is the recent press release from the Santa Fe Group announcing the Bill of Rights:

For centuries, jurors have been banned from seeking information on a trial from outside of the courtroom. The advent of the iPhone and BlackBerry have made that nearly impossible to enforce. Last week, just such a deliberation-room privacy breach led to a mistrial in a Florida drug trial. How will technology change the way we try crimes in an isolated setting? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

To read more on the case, visit the original New York Times article:

Mistrial by iPhone: Jurors’ Web Forays Are Upending Trials

John Sileo, Identity Theft Expert and Curious Privacy Guy

A few weeks ago, Javelin Safety & Research  released its comprehensive survey on Identity Theft & Fraud for the fifth consecutive year.

Let me boil it down to the Top 5 Identity Theft Findings that impact you (and my comments and opinions in parentheses):

1. Overall Identity Fraud Incidents Increased in the United States (the problem is getting worse as the economy sinks and people turn to crime to pay their bills)
2. Costs to Consumers are Down (businesses are being forced to take greater responsibility for the liabilities and costs of identity theft – in other words, the burden is shifting from the consumer to corporate America)
3. Fraudsters are Moving Much More Quickly (the crime of identity theft is moving from garden variety criminals into the hands of organized crime)
4. Gender Disparity—Women were 26 percent more likely to be victims of identity fraud than men in 2008 (three factors: 1. women’s purses contain more identity; 2. women are less cynical and more trusting of others [a generalization that proves itself anecdotally in my identity theft speeches every week - it is much easier to get a purse from a woman than a wallet from a man]; 3. more women than men are responsible for household finances, putting them at higher risk of losing the data

Identity theft speaker John Sileo shares his tax-time identity theft prevention tips.

This past week, I have been helping a gentleman recover from the theft of all of his tax records.  Before it is all over, this gentleman will have spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars simply preventing any further

fraudulent use of his identity. That doesn’t account for any damages already done to his finances, criminal record, medical records or social security benefits. There is very little that is more damaging and dangerous to your identity than losing your tax records. After all, tax records generally contain the most sensitive personally identifying information that you own, including Social Security Numbers (for you, your spouse and maybe even your kids), names, addresses, employers, net worth, etc. Because of this high concentration of sensitive data, tax time is like an all-you-can-eat buffet for identity thieves. Here are some of the dishes on which they greedily feed:

• Tax documents exposed on your desk (home and work)
• Private information that sits unprotected in your tax-preparer’s office
• Improperly mailed, emailed and digitally transmitted or filed records
• Photocopiers with hard drives that store a digital copy of your tax forms
• Copies of sensitive documents that get thrown out without being shredded
• Improperly stored and locked documents once your return is filed
• Tax-time scams that take advantage of our propensity to do whatever the IRS says (even if it’s not really the IRS asking)

Top Tips for Tax Time Identity Theft Protection