Identity Theft Statistics & Holiday Shopping
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
Son of a Breach! 40,000 Student Identities Exposed
The Social Security numbers, grades, and other personal identity information of over 40,000 former University of Hawaii students were posted online. The information was removed earlier this week, after almost 12 months online. The University apologized and explained that a faculty member doing a study on student success rates believed the information was being held on a secure server. It was not.
Apparently this was the third such breach that the University has suffered from in the past year. Each incident has increased student concern, and the university promises to beef up network security. It is beginning to look like these are promises that they have little intention of keeping. If the University were serious, they would immediately implement a data privacy awareness program to train staff and students on protecting private and sensitive information. There is no indication beyond empty press releases that they have begun taking even this most basic step.
U of H contends that there is no evidence that the information had been stolen or misused to date. That, however, is highly unlikely. Many times, identity thieves will wait until the dust has settled from such a breach to begin using the information for financial gain. The university has advised anyone who may have been affected to obtain and review their credit report for any signs of fraud. Again, if the university were serious, it would be providing free credit monitoring like that offered by CSIdentity.com or IdentityTheft911.com to those affected.
Law Enforcement Cuts Mean Identity Theft Will Continue to Rise
Identity theft prevention has become more important than ever before. All over the country, budget cuts have forced many law enforcement agencies to lay-off a large number of employees. The Oakland Police Station cut 80 officers from their force of 687 last month alone. Such severe cuts leave the department ill-equipped to respond to calls involving burglary, vandalism and especially identity theft.
Non-violent crimes have sunk to the bottom of police stations agenda. With no funds to investigate these crimes and catch the criminals, identity theft rates will continue to rise. Criminals will see this as an opportunity to prey on victims and steal identity for financial gain without any consequences.
This leaves many victims frustrated and feeling helpless. There are other places to turn and many resources to utilize if you do become a victim of identity theft. The Identity Theft Resource Center is a great place to start. You can call the victims assistance line toll-free at 1 (888) 400-5530. There is also an Identity Theft Prevention and Recovery Workbook available that can walk you through the steps you need to take to prevent and recover from identity theft.
In most cases, law enforcement agencies are not saying NO to stopping or solving identity theft or non violent crimes, just putting them on the back burner. I still highly recommend that youvisit your local police station and file a report if you have been the victim of Identity Theft.
Identity Theft Speaker Endorsed by Fort Bragg
I had the privilege of speaking at Fort Bragg this summer! Here is what they had to say:
I saw John Sileo’s presentation at a conference recently and I was thoroughly impressed. He really interacted so well with the audience that I actually wanted to bring him to Ft Bragg to help us celebrate our Consumer Awareness Month. It took several months of coordination, but we finally all got it together and John came down and did an excellent presentation to help us out with teaching our community all about identity theft. His presentation was interactive, dynamic, the audience was really pleased and after the presentation they held him there for an hour asking great questions! We were thoroughly pleased with John and we really enjoyed his presentation.
John Sileo is an identity theft and information security expert that speaks professionally to organizations that want to protect their profits against identity theft, social media exposure and corporate espionage. His recent clients include the Department of Defense, FDIC, FTC and Pfizer. Pcik up a copy of John’s latest book Privacy Means Profit - Prevent Identity Theft and Secure You and Your Bottom Line.
Identity Theft for Businesses: Mobile Data Breach
Mobile Data Theft
Technology is the focal point of data breach and workplace identity theft because corporations create, transmit, and store so many pieces of information digitally that it becomes a highly attractive target. This book is not intended to address the complex maze that larger organizations face in protecting their technological and digital assets. Rather, the purpose of this book is to begin to familiarize business employees, executives, and vendors with the various security issues facing them.
The task, then, is to develop a capable team (internal and external) to address these issues. In my experience, the following technology-related issues pose the greatest data-loss threats inside organizations:
- Laptop Theft: According to the Ponemon Institute, 36 percent of reported breaches are due to a lost or stolen laptop.
- Mobile Data Theft: Thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, tape backups, smart phones
- Malware: Software that infects corporate systems, allowing criminals inside these networks
- Hacking: Breaking into your computer system from the outside, using networks, wireless connections, remote access, and your Internet pipeline
- Wireless Theft: Wireless connections to the Internet in airports, hotels, cafes, and conferences
- Insider Theft: When someone in the IT department (or elsewhere) decides to make extra money by selling your data
Child Identity Theft Expert – Part IV Protection
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:
- 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.
Child Identity Theft Expert – Part III
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
Workplace Identity Theft: Shredding
The following is an excerpt from John’s latest book Privacy Means Profit. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit our website www.ThinkLikeASpy.com.
For businesses, shredding is low-hanging fruit (one of the easiest sources of data breach to eliminate). But businesses are so often focused on electronic forms of data breach that they fail to heed the following statistics highlighted in a recent Ponemon Institute study conducted for the Alliance for Secure Business Information:
- More than 50 percent of sensitive business data is still stored on paper documents.
- Forty-nine percent of data breaches reported in the survey were the result of paper documents.
- Sixty percent of businesses admitted that they didn’t provide the proper tools (e.g., shredders) to safely discard documents that were no longer needed.
- The average data breach recovery cost according to this survey was $6.3 million.
If you own a business, make sure to destroy sensitive documents prior to discarding them, to decrease your legal liability. Businesses are required to destroy all consumer information before discarding it in the trash. The Fair & Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) Disposal Rule states that ‘‘any person who maintains or otherwise possesses consumer information for a business purpose’’ must properly destroy the information prior to disposal. FACTA further states that every person and/or business must take ‘‘reasonable measures’’ to protect against unauthorized access to the use of the information in connection with its disposal… Click Here to Continue.
5 Reasons NOT to Buy Our Latest Book!
Privacy Means Profit (Wiley) available in bookstores today!
Here are The Top 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy It:
You love sharing bank account numbers, surfing habits and customer data with cyber thieves over unprotected wireless networks
You never tempt hackers and con artists by using Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Docs, or other cloud computing platforms to store or communicate private info, personally or professionally.
You bury your head in the sand, insisting that “insider theft” won’t affect your home or business.
You’ve already hardened your laptops and other mobile computing devices in 7 vital ways, eliminating a major source of both personal and corporate data theft.
You have a “thing” for identity theft recovery costs and would rather invest thousands in recovery than $25 in prevention.
If you want to defend yourself and your business against identity theft, data breach and corporate espionage, then buy a copy of Privacy Means Profit.
Privacy Means Profit
Prevent Identity Theft and Secure You and Your Bottom Line
Privacy Means Profit builds a bridge between good personal privacy habits (protect your wallet, online banking, trash, etc.) with the skills and motivation to protect workplace data (bulletproof your laptop, server, hiring policies, etc.).
Sileo In the Media
Privacy Project Newsletter
Tools and tips for bulletproofing yourself against identity theft, data breach and corporate espionage. Subscribe to the newsletter and get John Sileo's 7 Survival Strategies for Starving Data Spies for FREE!
