‘Identity Theft Prevention’ Articles

Don’t Miss John  as he discusses

Identity Theft and Identity Theft

Prevention on The Bill Handel Show!

Today, February 4, 2010 at 1PM Pacific Time.

Click HERE to Listen Live!

John Sileo became America’s leading Identity Theft Speaker & Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076

Identity theft is rampant throughout the holiday season. Over the past 3 years stolen data being used in less than one week jumped from 33% to 71%, meaning that they steal today and shop today.  Identity thieves count on our lackadaisical attitude toward monitoring our wealth.

Not only does legitimate business pick up during the holiday season, but Identity theft and fraudulent Business seems to be on the rise as well. Especially during these hard economic times Identity thieves are on the prowl more than ever looking for a quick fix to their financial problems.  It is just not possible to observe and ward off every threat to our identity. There will be documents that you forget to destroy or lock up, accounts that you won’t cancel, checks that you will mail, and waiters that will disappear with your credit card. It is not practical to think that we can cover every situation that threatens the safety of our identity. But we are not helpless in these situations.

Like an experienced spy, we have a solid backup plan. It is extremely important to monitor the key components of our identity especially during the Holidays. Over 50% of all Identity theft is self detected. Here are a few tips to stay safe and keep an eye out for Identity Fraud this Holiday Season:

Identity theft statistics, dry as melba toast, have something to teach us about shopping this Holiday season. Listening to the media, you would think that the Internet and cybercrime are to blame for most cases of identity theft. They are biased toward technology stories because they are new and interesting (actually, they are starting to get old). If it’s not hackers and phishers, then its war driving and key logging.

But their technological bias is Wrong.

Cybercrime only accounts for 11% of actual identity fraud cases in the latest Javelin study and online shopping accounts for a meager 1%!

When it comes to victims having their identity stolen while making in-store purchases, women have a 94% incident rate and men only 43%. Women tend to shop more in stores, men online.
There is an important lesson in this confusion between reality and perception: don’t automatically believe everything you hear, especially in the media.  It’s sexy to write about cybercrime, but the disproportionate amount of attention it receives gives us a false sense that it is the leading cause of identity theft. As you start your holiday shopping, don’t be afraid to shop online, but only if you have protected your computer and internet connection properly.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Technology plays a smaller role in identity theft than we perceive

Freezing your credit is the number one way to protect against financial identity theft. If everyone in the country applied for a Credit Freeze, identity thieves would quickly be out of business. At least, a major part of their business. Take 30 minutes and lower your chances of identity theft drastically.

Every time you establish new credit (e.g., open up a new credit card, store account or bank account, finance a car or home loan, etc.), an entry is created in your credit file which is maintained by companies like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. The trouble is, with your name, address and social security number, an identity thief can pretend to be you and can establish credit (i.e., spend your net worth) in your name.

A credit freeze is simply an agreement you make with the three main credit reporting bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) that they won’t allow new accounts (credit card, banking, brokerage, loans, rental agreements, etc.) to be attached to your name/social security number unless you contact the credit bureau, give them a password and allow them to unfreeze or thaw your account for a short period of time. Yes, freezing your credit takes a bit of time (maybe an hour of work), can be a little inconvenient when you want to set up a new account (that said, let’s face it, businesses want to make it as easy as possible to unfreeze your credit because they benefit when you set up new accounts and spend more money) and it can cost a few dollars (generally about $10 to unfreeze, a small price compared to the recovery costs of identity theft). And it is worth it! It’s like putting locks on your doors.

In Parts I – III we talked about how easy it is for your child’s identity to be kidnapped and who does it; now let’s get to the heart of…

Protecting Your Children

Acting now on behalf of your child will protect them from consequences common to child victims:

• Starting adulthood with a credit rating low enough to scare away the hungriest of loan sharks
• Being denied a first loan, credit card or apartment rental because of a crime committed 10-15 years earlier (the passage of time makes this crime very hard to clear up)
• Being denied access to college or a new job
• Having a warrant out for her arrest for crimes that she didn’t commit

In the same way that you can’t protect your children from every bruise and scrape, you can’t entirely remove the risk of identity theft. You can, however, prevent or soften the fall if it does happen. Take these steps first:

1. Stop giving out your child’s personal information. Until you are confident that it is absolutely necessary to receive the services desired, withhold their personal information. More than 80% of organizations that ask for your child’s Social Security Number don’t actually need it to establish services. If you must give it, ask them how they will use it, how long they will keep it and how it will be protected while they have it. Vigilance is highly effective. Never carry your child’s SSN with you.

If you’re thinking “this couldn’t happen to my child,” think again! Let’s look at

Who Does This?

The identity thief is not always a stranger. In many cases, it’s a relative with bad credit who takes advantage of a child’s pristine credit. Conveniently, these family members generally have access to the information necessary to maximize the fraud with little attention.
This seems absurd, but imagine a parent who is strapped for cash, has a bad credit score and needs to buy groceries. In this case, short-term thinking blinds the relative or friend to long-term consequences. In other instances, the child’s future is not taken into consideration at all.

Frankly, it doesn’t take much to get the crime underway; all a criminal needs is the child’s name and Social Security Number. These pieces of personal information are exposed in a variety of ways:

• When registering for daycare, schools and recreational sports
• On medical, dental and hospital records
• When joining organizations like the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, etc.
• When the above information is permanently stored and accessed by volunteers or employees
• When one of the above organizations is breached by a hacker or malicious software
• When an adult befriends your child on a social networking site (MySpace, Facebook) and eventually socially engineers private information out of them

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

I spoke about an hour ago to the Airmen (and women) of Beale Air Force Base outside of Sacramento, California. The room was packed with incredibly inquisitive, highly dedicated members of our armed services. There was a General in the audience; obviously the base cares about their personnel and take their data security very seriously. They weren’t there just to see an identity theft speaker, they were there because part of protecting our country against aggressors means that they must also protect the flow of information that makes our nation so powerful. With military, corporate and industrial espionage on the rise, they are smart to be focusing on the proactive protection of knowledge assets.

And they gave me a dose of my own medicine.

I’ve never been a big fan of LifeLock. You can easily implement most of what this identity theft protection service offers by doing it for yourself – for free (see the identity theft tool box). It appears that Ron Lieber of the New York Times is also questioning the validity of this identity monitoring service (along with many other industry experts, journalists and class action lawyers). But all services are not created equal.