Slashdot Mirror
Identity Theft Countermeasures?
gbell asks: "Stories about reconstructing shredded documents and horrific tales of rampant identity theft (at least 750K victims/year) have me scared and wondering if I'm being careful enough. What are savvy Slashdot readers doing to protect their financial identity? I already have fraud alerts on my credit reports, which make sure I'm contacted if any requests for additional credit happen. I've called 800-5-OPT-OUT and stopped all the credit card offers. I use unique passwords on all of my online financial accounts. I shred and pulp-ify all documents. I order periodic copies of my credit reports (although I'm irked that I have to pay for them - they're only free if you've been recently denied credit). Is there anything else I should be doing? People spend years sorting out ID theft, and I'm wondering when credit-abusers will start crying 'fraud' just to get out of debt... making things even harder for the true victims. Cops don't have time to do anything, even if you find the perp yourself. The situation looks like it's going to get much worse, and I'm willing to take steps now to increase my security at the cost of convenience. Suggestions?"
Looking at one of their reports, I believe the quote was "The FTC's identity theft Web site had received more than 699,000 hits since it was launched in February 2000" that spawned that number.... The actual report I expect it's from is here, and the article from the story misquoted it - the actual number of complaints to the FTC via their hotline for 2001 was over (but probably around) 86,000.
Several websites seem to use the larger number, but most of them are selling something and just playing "woopsie" with the numbers.
At 86,000, that puts it more at the level of arson. So I'll spend just about as much effort avoiding it - none outside of common sense. However, my credit cards do have insurance, just like I have insurance on my apartment and belongings. And I don't post my SS# to usenet.
What I encounter far more often is the stupid debt collection agencies sending me bills that have nothing to do with me, where the name is slightly different and the SS# is nowhere near the same - I don't think those are someone trying to steal my identity. Rather, I think it's the debt collectors getting desperate to find someone and spamming any name that's even close hoping that either they'll find him, or someone else will pay the bill without realizing it isn't them.
Oh - by the way, the "using seperate random passwords for important online accounts" thing.... I count that as common sense. Add in - not logging into bank or brokerage services from untrusted computers, especially at Kinko's.
I write code.
I am a victim of identity theft, and it is hell dealing with the fallout of it. Someone opened store credit accounts in my name, ran up huge charges, and never paid them. It doesn't take an AFDB to be worried about this. It happens, and it's not easy to fix.
I have been round and round with the companies that were scammed with my identity. I am just now learning how to make sure my credit reports are annotated that the bad accounts are from identity theft. The bad info stays on the accounts, which as far as scoring goes, is just as bad if they weren't annotated.
The difficult part in dealing with this is you can't prove a negative. The companies love to say "prove you didn't open the account." There is no protection for this, and plans I've had for home ownership are ruined, at least for the past couple years, thanks to identity theft.
To those of you saying the poster needs an AFDB, think about what you'd do if you found false information, using your SSN, on your credit report tomorrow. That is what has happened to me.