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Cringely on Identity Theft
Boiled Frog writes "Prompted by the theft of his mail, Cringely investigates how easy it is to steal identities from government publications. In this article he explains how he got the identities of 300,000 people which he calculates to be valued at $65 billion dollars. If Cringely can do it, anyone can."
Watch out - this could happen to you.
"...valued at $65 billion dollars"
Come on editors, I know it's early on the West Coast, but really.
Some bastard stole my identity and wrote that article under my name!
I'll only go as high as $50 billion and not a penny more!
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
If I were Cringely, I would have sold those names and now be the proud new owner of Microsoft. Free the source!
Pssst, Mr. Hawking. Try that one again.
$65 billion dollars
Did you get it that time? Lets try again..watch closely now!
----> $ <----65 billion ----> dollars <----
Did that help?
Wreck your credit score every 7 years by declaring bankruptcy.
:-)
Then no one will want to steal your ID
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
My solution to discurage anyone from stealing my identity has been to default on all my student loans, consistently pay my credit cards a few month late, and write anti-government propeganda letters to the local paper (amazingly, I still have my DoD security clearence!). The scammers run screaming...
My lesson learned: shread everything.
EXCEPT the DICTIONARY!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Oh, come off it, only an illiterate shit would fall for this.
There are a lot of people in this world who aren't as intelligent and perceptive like you so obviously are!
This is no better than the usual spam.
I disagree strongly. Getting an email that looks as if it is coming from a bank or service you subscribe to is not the same as getting an email about enlarging your penis.
(I'm being generous letting them off w. the "unknown persons" bit b/c, while it's bad grammar (person == singular, people == plural), but "person or persons unknown" has made it into the vernacular)..
You, sir, are a bit of a twat.
Can you imagine what would happen if a misguided Robin Hood decided to popularize the techniques and teach them to America's poor?
Tyler Durden?
Durden?
Durden?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Three months later, I get a call from ATT wireless about my enormous phone bill. I told them they must be mistaken so they tried a couple of different things to verify that I was me, then called the cell phone to do the same thing. Obviously the person on the cell phone couldn't answer the questions.
As far as I know, the only thing that happened was the cell phone account being closed. I would have gladly paid the bill if they would have just given me the cell phone number and a list of called/incoming numbers.
My plan was to find the bastard and call him by my name while beating the shit out of him untill he fessed up that he wasn't me and told me I have the wrong guy.