About Identity Theft

I was 17 once. I hung around with good kids, not so good kids and very bad kids. Teens heavily influence one another in ways that can have a direct impact on their futures. When you are young and new to the world, you are seeking out how things are supposed to be. Your gauge is guided by what your parents have become, but kids don’t often think their parents are smart enough to make the right decisions. So even if the kids’ parents are great, the kid may rebel and do stupid things.

At a young age, a kid that seems to have his act together by his peers, may become a leader. That kid may be a great influencer but may not have his act together at all. He may be a leader, but a blind one. As the saying goes, the blind leading the blind.

In California “police have arrested High school football players in connection with a string of street robberies that targeted teenage boys over the past two weeks. The teenagers were wanted in connection with a string of five robberies that began June 30. After police alerted the community via e-mail and local media, someone called and offered a tip that led police to the suspect’s home. Police said the teens in custody told them that the victims were targeted because they were walking alone and distracted, either by listening to music or talking on their cell phones. In each of the reported cases, a vehicle appeared to canvass a street for an unsuspecting teen. One occupant would get out and walk ahead of the victim. He would then turn around and punch or grab the victim and steal his electronics, usually an iPod, cell phone or both, while shouting threats.”

When I was a kid, I saw this. Teens I ran with thought behavior like this was “cool”. Fortunately for me, I didn’t see the fun in that kind of behavior. I think I got lucky. Today, many of those kids I ran with are messed up, dead or in jail. When young and impressionable, even a good kid can go bad when with the wrong crowd. And for the rest of his life he will pay the penalty. My parents were great. As good a parent as you may be, your kid can get caught up in something like this. Have you talked to your kid today?

Guarding your personal information is vitally important in keeping your identity safe. Be vigilant in guarding your information. Use the techniques listed here to help you. As I’ve said before, there is no fool proof way of keeping your identity safe. You can only make it harder to steal. If you use the techniques in this 3 part article to keep an eye on your credit report, you can act quickly before too much damage is done.

What is identity theft? The term identity theft first appeared in the 1990′s. Identity is when someone poses as you using your identification. They can open credit accounts, buy or lease items, use your credit cards or commit a large number of crimes. Identity theft is a very traumatic experience for many people in the U.S.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center about 10 million people a year are victims of identity theft. The rate of victims have increased 80% between 2002 and 2003. The lost is estimated to be 3.2 billion as the result of identity theft. There is an interesting report by Katrina Baum, Ph that you can read ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/it04.pdf

The ITRC (Identity Theft Resource Center) sud-divides ID theft into 4 categories.

1. Financial ID theft – Using another’s name and SSN to obtain goods and services
2. ID cloning – Using another’s information to assume his or her identity.
3. Criminal ID theft – Poising another when arrested for a crime.
4. Business/Commercial ID theft – Using another’s business name to obtain credit.

There are several different ways for someone to steal your information.

1. Rummaging through trash. (Dumpster Diving)
2. Stealing mail.
3. Accessing your credit report by illegal means.
4. Eavesdropping on public transmissions.
5. Obtaining personal information from personnel records.
6. Watching when you are using an ATM or phone booth, trying to capture pin numbers.
7. Getting information from the Internet. ( Public record sites and fee based information brokers.)
8. Sending email that looks as if it was coming from your bank or credit card company. (Phishing)
9. Stealing personal information from computer databases. (Trojan horses, hacking)

One way that has surfaced since the Patriot Act, is for unscrupulous landlords to use credit reports to commit fraud. Slumlords are the biggest offenders. They use the right to request background checks to get information that is later used to commit crimes. This type of ID theft is created and enforced by Federal law. Someone had a very serious lapse of judgment when passing this law.

So, how do you defend yourself from ID theft? There is no foolproof way. The only thing you can do is make it harder for someone to steal your ID. Some steps you can take:

1. Reduce the number of credit and debit cards you own.
2. Do not use debit cards when ordering online. ( They are harder to straighten out)
3. Sign your cards as soon as they arrive.
4. Do not loan your cards to anyone.
5. Do not sign a blank receipt.
6. Do not write your account number on the outside of an envelope.
7. Do not give out your account number over the phone, unless you instigated the call and you know who you are dealing with.
8. Do not put your credit card number on your check. In may states, it is unlawful to do this.
9. Do not have your SSN or drivers license number printed on your checks.
10. Do not let merchants handwrite your SSN onto your checks.
11. Do not carry your SSN card unless you are required to have it.
12. Do not throw pre-approved credit or insurance offers in the trash. Shred them.
13. Keep a record of all your accounts in a secure place.
14. Save receipts and compare them to your bills.
15. Void incorrect receipts.
16. Report questionable charges in writing promptly to the card issuer.
17. When using your card in a store or restaurant, keep a close eye on how your card is handled.
18. Always take credit card receipts with you. Never throw them into a public trash can.
19. When creating passwords and pins, don’t use any part of your SSN or drivers license number, birth dates, pet’s names or anything else that easy to guess. Passwords with letters and numbers are harder to break. Better passwords contain capital and small letters along with numbers. Example: B6hr8L
20. Memorize passwords and pins.
21. Give your SSN only to those that absolutely need it. ( tax forms, employment records, banking and property transactions)
22. Check your Social Security Personal Earnings and Benefits Estimate statement each year.
23. Install a firewall and virus protection on your computer at home.
24. Password protect files that contain personal information,
25. Never respond to emails that appear to come from your bank, ebay, paypal, or your credit card company that asks you to go to a website to confirm your information. (This is a site that asks you for information like your SSN, date of birth and so on.) Legitimate business never do this. Visit antiphising.org for more information.
26. File sharing and file swapping software exposes your computer to hackers. If you use them, install a strong firewall and virus protection programs.
27. Install a locked mail box at your house.
28. Pickup new checks at the bank. Do not have them mailed to you.
29. Use automated billing where possible.
30. Pay bills online where automatic billing is not possible.
31. Check your credit report often.

Robert Hughes is credit specialist who specializes in credit repair. He received his degree in accounting in 1979. He is also an internet marketer who owns Hughes Network Marketing, LLC, which owns and operates several marketing websites, one of which is http://getyourcreditrepaired.com

If you’ve used a credit card to make a payment on anything since the year 2005, you should be thankful for the Payment Card Industry’s Security Standard. It is a set of rules that help protect consumer information, specifically the information that is attached to your credit card. These rules govern the type of information security technology a merchant is required to have.

While these rules have undoubtedly made consumers safer, there is a huge problem with them, mainly that thousands of businesses do not comply with them. The PCI Security Standards Council recently conducted a survey of 560 U.S. based and international businesses, and its findings were quite discouraging.

The organization determined that: *Only 28 percent of small businesses comply with the standards. *Of those that do comply, 55 percent only secure credit card information, not other sensitive details, like Social Security numbers. *Many companies don’t even attempt to comply because they find it to be cost prohibitive.

So what does this mean to you? Well, you are safer than you were before, kind of. It depends on the companies you do business with. You can get more assurance by working with larger companies – which means those with over 75,000 employees – since over 70 percent asserted that they were fully compliant. However, there is no way to tell who is compliant and who isn’t unless you personally interview a member of the IT department.

In other disturbing news, these guidelines do not even say what specific software a company needs to use. They just give advice for best practices. About 10 percent of the businesses deemed fully compliant were not using basic antivirus software on their company machines. This means a thief could easily hack into the network and farm data, regardless of how well the company adheres to the guidelines.

After analyzing the results of the survey and feedback from additional sources, the Council plans to introduce a new set of guidelines in September of next year. Hopefully these guidelines will be more consistently followed.

Even if all companies follow these guidelines to a T, you are still at risk every time you make a credit card transaction. Even if you don’t become the victim of a data breach, something can happen that can expose your information to the public. You could accidentally leave your card on the checkout counter, as I am guilty of doing. A thief could peer over your shoulder while you’re getting a cash advance at an ATM. Or, a server at a restaurant could discreetly copy down your credit card number, name and expiration date before running your check.

What’s a consumer to do? Sign up for identity theft protection of course! This can help you get notified ASAP if someone who is not you is accessing your credit accounts, or opening new accounts using your name, address, Social Security number or other information. These plans are affordable and you can sign up for one right now.

The fact is, you can’t protect yourself from all forms of identity theft, and the types that you can guard against require a Rain Man-like focus. One way or another, it’s going to cost you time or money or both.

Identity theft protection detractors say, “Why pay a monthly fee when all you have to do is…”

Securely dispose of mail. The standard advice is to thoroughly shred preapproved credit card offers and anything that includes any account information. While this is good advice and should be heeded, it’s not going to protect you when your bank or mortgage company or utility provider tosses your information in a dumpster that is subsequently raided by identity thieves.

Opt out of junk mail and preapproved credit card offers. This is good advice and can be done at OptOutPrescreen.com. However, even if you opt out of new offers, others will still arrive. It’s inevitable. You also need to get a locking mailbox, but that still won’t fully protect you.

Get a P.O. box. This won’t protect you at all. Anyone who recommends this tactic doesn’t understand how identity theft occurs.

Check your credit for free at AnnualCreditReport.com. This is an excellent way to stay on top of your credit reports and keep tabs on what accounts may be open under your name. However, it’s only good for one credit report per bureau per year. You should really check your credit report monthly, and that isn’t cheap.

Set fraud alerts. Fraud alerts are a great layer of protection, but they expire every 90 days, and most people don’t bother to renew. Plus, fraud alerts only serve as a guideline for creditors, who are not required to contact you before issuing credit.

Get a credit freeze. This is a great way to help prevent new account fraud. I recommend this. But by itself, a credit freeze is not enough.

These are all layers of prevention that will help, but by themselves or even in combination, they cannot provide the same degree of protection offered by a reputable, full-service, paid product.

To ensure peace of mind and protect your most valuable asset, your identity—subscribe to an identity protection service, such as McAfee Identity Protection, which offers proactive identity surveillance, lost wallet protection, and alerts when suspicious activity is detected on your accounts. For additional tips, please visit http://www.counteridentitytheft.com

Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. See him discuss an identity theft “pandemic” on CNBC. (Disclosures)

You’ve heard of laundry, and money laundering but have you heard of click laundering? Are you a small business owner? Do you use ads or affiliate links on your website? Find out about the latest round of internet fraud scams that can cost business owners and consumers money.

Ever heard of click laundering? It’s here! The term is a play on the legal definition of money laundering, and involves a relatively new Internet crime that is a sophisticated form of “click fraud.” Bogus ad-revenue-generating Web-link “clicks” are disguised to appear as legitimate online enquiries.
Internet fraud is evolving from the days of fake emails and phishing scams to entail e-commerce and online businesses. This newest form of fraud cost legitmate businesses and you, the consumer.
Microsoft Senior VP and General Counsel Brad Smith said: “Online ad fraud is evolving in sophistication all the time. Fighting it demands vigilance and dedication to an honest and secure online marketplace. We believe that a trusted marketplace is critical to Internet commerce, and Microsoft will continue to take aggressive action working with industry and law enforcement to protect our platforms, customers and advertisers.”
Microsoft currently has a couple of lawsuits pending involving the click laundering phenomenon. The scam was uncovered after Microsoft noticed highly a irregular escalation in number of ad clicks on two of their sites.
The way it works is this: A Web-site has ads that encourage interested parties to click on the ad for more information or to purchase a product. Generally, the site’s owner receives some form of share of revenue generated via the online ad. But here’s the kicker, in click laundering, the ad clicks are not legitimate. They can be done by single individuals manually, or even by a computer program or automated script.
It’s a sophisticated crime in that scammers will use high-tech means to achieve their fraudulent goals, including utilizing malware to trick Internet users into visiting sites where they are actually unwittingly clicking on an ad.
Plus, the thieves are even more creative in that they are disguising their clicks’ origins where the ads cannot tell where the clicks are actually coming from.
Microsoft has announced it’s actively investigating such patterns of Internet fraud and has vowed to take full legal action against those responsible. The crime is a felony in many jurisdictions. www.lostclicks.com
Identity theft secrets, guest writer, Sami K. Hartsfield, ACP, is a paralegal in Houston with experience in commercial litigation and tax law. She holds a degree in paralegal studies and a bachelor of science degree in political science. After interning with Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals under Chief Justice Adele Hedges and completed the University of Houston Law Center’s Summer 2008 Prelaw Institute, she is preparing to enter law school this fall. Sami holds a national advanced paralegal certification, and four specialty certifications: Discovery; Trial Practice; Contracts Management; and Social Security Disability Law. More helpful tax information can be found at her National Tax Law Examiner page.

While identity theft has only been prime in the news for about the last five yaers, the crime is certainly not a new one. All one has to do to determine that fact is read about the case of Tom Lesh. His identity was stolen back in the 1970s. The saddest part of this news story is that it took prosecutors 35 years to nab the criminal that did this to him, even though he was pretty sure he knew who it was, especially since the identity thief was bragging about it publicly.

Way back when, Tom’s brother had a bit too much to drink and told his friend, Clark Mower, a lot of personal details about Tom, including his birth place and his mother’s maiden name. Little did he know that this would turn into such a debacle.

During the 35 years that the so called friend “was” Tom, he accumulated $10,000 in back taxes and wrote off bad debt that reached into the hundreds of thousands. Mower even filed for bankruptcy and received benefits from the Department of Social and Health Services in a state that the real Lesh had never even lived in. Lesh’s first inkling that something was wrong came when an employee in personnel at his place of business told him that someone else had submitted his Social Security number for reason of employment in another state. He was subsequently denied a car loan, even though he assumed his credit was fairly good.

While he could not get an arrest made until just now, Lesh did do some smart things to protect himself, and thus he never had to shell out a dime that he did not owe. For one, he put a fraud alert on his credit file so that Mower could not continue opening new credit cards without Lesh’s permission. Secondly, he contacted the authorities after noticing something was amiss. In fact, he has been working with the Social Security Administration, the IRS and other organizations for years.

This case made news because of the severe length of time it took to get the culprit arrested. In most instances it does not take nearly that long. Well that is if the thief is apprehended at all. However, there are some very important lessons that can be learned here. First and foremost, is do not share other people’s personal information, or your own, no matter how much it seems like a good idea after you’ve had a few beers.

The additional and more serious lesson is that you should get some kind of identity theft protection.

Lesh was completely surprised that there was something going on with his identity, and he only realized what was going on because another person told him. Then again, he was still shocked that he could not get that car loan. If he had identity protection that kept an eye on his credit report for him, he could have contacted the creditors when something could be done about it quickly. This 35 year saga could have been cut much, much shorter. It would have been far easier to repair and of course the heartbreaking ordeal could have been thwarted.

Do you need a better reason to protect your identity? Why not start today?