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Identity theft Happens Predominantly Offline
prostoalex writes "Worried about identity theft online? Relax, say the Feds. You're much more likely to have your identity stolen offline (72% of the cases). In half of all the cases, it's the friendly relatives, neighbors and friends who steal the identity of the victim. Moreover, those watching their financial accounts online lose approximately $551 per incident. The average rockets to $4543 for those relying on paper statements from their banks and credit card companies."
That something conducted around the flow of information happens in the prime medium in which information is transferred.
amazing isnt it ?
The best purchase you can make is a paper shredder, preferably a cross-cut model. When you get your mail, either shred it, or file it right away. A pile of mail sitting around is an easy target, especially if it isn't opened - you probably won't miss it if you haven't opened it. Shred everything, even those credit card applications. You don't want any information easily available!!!
To start stealing IDs online, you guys are WAY behind your quota!
I worked in retail for awhile, I learned a trick for myself. I write "ASK FOR ID" on the back of all my credit/debit cards.
RARELY do i have someone ask to see my identification, no matter where I go. it amazes me how easily it is to get away with small things like this.
But I do urge everyone to do that with their credit cards, it may not always be checked, but it is better than a scribble on the back. But while in london, I almost had a pub owner take my CC because my name was't "ASK FORD ID", arg.
Do they count phishing as online identity theft? That's really taken off the last year, and it's a lot more efficient than dumpster diving.
I was at the bowling ally for a party, and used a discover card, (mistake) and a few days latter they called asking if i charged 2000 and some odd dollars to some outdoors store. Clearly, it was the bowling ally guy stole it or sold it to someone. The theif should have spent 200$ at a time not 2xxx$.
Worship at the altar of technology. It can do no wrong.
Identity theft was ALL offline 10 years ago. So are we supposed to ignore the phishing problem until it reaches 50 percent? The rate of growth in the crime is no doubt much higher online, the same way that the growth in Internet ecommerce was much higher the past holiday season.
Plus, there are some sorts of identity theft that really only make sense online, such as eBay and PayPal scams.
friendly relatives, neighbors and friends who steal the identity of the victim
I suppose that relatives that dumb aren't smart enough to sit down and use those browser-cached passwords to access your PayPal account while you're in the bathroom and send themselves some money anyway.
I'm actually surprised that co-workers aren't a bigger piece of the statistical pie on this one. They often have access to records, PCs, the all important "work number" and so on. I've run across those incidents, and am amazed they're not more common.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah but if it's 20 million people who lost money enough to average 551$ and onlt 500 000 people who lose a few grand, there's still cause to worry. Statistics can mean anything... especially if like me, you haven't RTFA.
Call me crazy, but before the marketroids got a hold of it, it was known as "fraud".
*phew* Finally, someone states the fact that the Internet is not a big scary netherworld full of monsters like some would like to have us believe.
Consider that an online banking site may *not actually* be an online banking site. A physical bank, on the otherhand, is without fail, a physical bank. However, I don't have to worry about someone rooting through my garbage to find bank statements if all my data is online.
So both systems have their inherent vulnerabilities. The fact is that you are really paranoid, you are ultimately safest doing everything in person and taking proper measures to destroy relevant documents.
All this study says is that there is a higher incidence of paper based identity theft. Which is to be expected: how many low-level criminals do you think know javascript, for example?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
The CC industry needs to create a secure credit card. Until they do, fraud cannot be stopped.
John Mayer: You ever go on Ebay?
Trick Daddy: Yeah, once, but I'd be scared to put my credit card information on the computer.
John Mayer: You realize that you've gone to jail... a couple times.
Trick Daddy: Right.
John Mayer: You lived the thug life.
Trick Daddy: Right.
John Mayer: You've got a diamond encrusted AK-47 around your neck.
Trick Daddy: Right.
John Mayer: And your biggest fear so far from hanging out with you is...
Trick Daddy: Credit card fraud.
John Mayer: Is credit card fraud on Ebay?
Trick Daddy: Right.
John Mayer: That's some domestic stuff.
You're much more likely to have your identity stolen offline (72% of the cases)
yeah, thats true if youre one of the 72% of americans who rely on paper statements for your financial accounts.
But if you're one of the 28% of americans who make financial transactions online, well, then...
you more or less have equal probability to have your identity stolen WHETHER OR NOT you use paper or electronic transactions.
The manner in which you REDUCE your likelihood to have your identity stolen, is directly related to the amount of security preventions used when dealing with your finanacial transactions and records thereof.
man who'd have thought our federal government was so clueless.
Type your social security number here: _________________ and see if it is on the stolen number list.
With paper receipts lying about, people who have general malaise about shredding, and your credit card statements as easy as a 5 second walk away in the dining room, it's entirely easy to steal an identity without ever touching a computer. There are no passwords to enter when you pick up a letter from the living room table. No secret keys, nothing.
This shouldn't preclude taking appropriate measure on your computer of course, but I think people really need to pay more attention to the security of their home by taking a few preventive steps, than run around screaming how every e-commerce store is a "ripe target for the h4>0rz".
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
I am very prone to this type of identity theft. I frequently have bank statements, credit cards, etc laying around my home desk, kitchen counter (I have a bar room style kitchen counter), etc.
:)
When say the people who I play DnD with come on over they can easily get my statements...hmm especially since some of them i only just met... Oh well
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The article states that 72 percent of the thefts of personal information for scams last year was done offline. That suggests that the number of thefts that occured is very heavily weighted to the side of "happened offline." :)
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
My brother had an incident of identity theft which happened through the mail. A gang drove around and picked up envelopes containing payment for bills and had checks printed using the correct checking account information. They even printed drivers licenses with their own picture and changed the birthdate to about 10 years older than my brother's age.
He caught the unauthorized activity by chance when he deposited a check at the bank and they told him he had a negative balance. Around $480 of unauthorized activity had taken place. They froze the account at that moment, he went and filed a police report, and the bank canceled payment of all of the fraudulent items.
He received calls and letters for months saying he had written bad checks and that he would have a warrent put out for his arrest if he did not pay. He had to mail dozens of copies of the police report and a copy of the notarized statement he made saying he did not write the checks or authorize electronic payment of the items purchased on the internet. The postage totaled about $30. The money from his account was eventually all returned to him, but all of the time spent on the phone with companies trying to get the issue straightened out is a huge hassle, and the money for postage and telephone calls to various out-of-state companies comes out of your own pocket.
I had a friend in college whose dad opened up a credit card account in my friend's name, charged it up, and let it default. My friend talked to legal services on campus (I'm not sure how good our campus legal services is but our law school is pretty good for a public school). They basically told him that he sould either pay it off or claim fraud and let the credit card company haul his dad off to jail. I can't imaging putting my child in that situation. He asked me what he should do but I didn't know what to tell him. That's a pretty sorry situation for a relative to put you in, especially your own father.
If your identity is stolen, it ruins your credit rating for the rest of your life. Why? Because no financial institution will trust that it's really you wanting to finance the furniture or buy the house.
What we need is some kind of system involving cryptographic key exchange between buyers, sellers, and their banks. Sellers should make an offer for a specified amount, going into a specified account. If the buyer approves, they will get an encrypted 'check' only good for *that amount* to be transferred only to *that account*. If someone loses their authentication keys, they can stop by a bank and have them reissued -- the teller will do a 'strong AI' check against biometric IDs of the purported patron -- comparing photographs, signatures, perhaps even fingerprints.
As it currently stands, it's way to easy to commit fraud with blank checks, credit cards, and all the applications that come in the mail. We need a new system.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
In half of all the cases, it's the friendly relatives, neighbors and friends who steal the identity of the victim
Hey!!! I didn't order a collection of XXX-videos - now wait a minute...
SCOTT!!!!!
If the banks sent more statements, thier would be more pieces of physical information. This would be more account numbers in the mail and in the trash.
-- Nic
One thing all the credit card companies and bureaus (Equifax, etc) told us to do is to call their fraud hotlines and put a block on each card that keeps anyone from changing the mailing address. ( no I don't remember what happens if I actually DO want to move...I've been here 20 years and I aint movin...con sarn it)
Most of the in-world identity theft is about establishing NEW lines of credit or making NEW purchases. I know since I have been a victim and experienced the hassle. That being said, I would consider one of those phishing scams or viruses that retrieve your EXISTING bank account information MUCH worse than someone taking out a new credit card in my name.
As upsetting as it is to have someone take out new credit in your name, I would have been MUCH more upset to find out someone had emptied my bank account.
Yippee! I only got ripped off $100.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You're much more likely to have your identity stolen offline (72% of the cases).
Well, 28% is still ALOT for identity theft. I'd still be careful of what you do on the internet that involves personal data.
Also, it's it kinda ironic that the top thread right now had one of those "Click for a free Mac Mini" sigs which are one of the main portals for this kind of stuff.
Check out Mon and Mon.cgi
You forgot the most important factor: cow orkers overhear everything within a 3-cube radius.
With the web, it's not too bad -- but sometimes you have to deal with IVR (interactive voice response) systems, and that's when you get into trouble.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard a cow orker enunciating a credit card number (or SSN, or bank number, and sometimes both), one digit at a time, into an IVR mechanism.
Adding insult to injury, the IVR system is sometimes used as a front-end to enter the "numbers" data without human input before the call gets sent to India. I can tell when this is happened when I hear a pause between the numbers, the usual "Hi, I'm calling about... (pause) ...her name was Florence."
Thanks, buddy! Now I've got your mother's maiden name, too!
It irks me that the agency is still under contract to the government. The privacy policy they had us sign when we applied actually said that our data would be totally safe and secure. (Of course, that's an insane promise, but they shouldn't put it in writing!) And the agency completely bungled the way they told people about the data theft -- even counselling people to do nothing, which conflicted with the government/police recommendations. Thousands of people were affected, but I bet my husband and I were the only ones who knew to check with police, instead of doing nothing.
-- SYS 64738 --
Solution: stop printing full bank account and credit card numbers on every piece of information. Honestly, since so many institutions treat their account numbers like passwords (including the US government) you'd think they'd at least put the basic, minimal amount of effort into not plastering it onto every page of every document that may pass by your eyes.
Hey /.tters
:-)
Sorry to go off on a tangent.
But when they say "offline" does that mean "not on a computer" or "not on the internet"?
Because the other day I was at a public terminal and I noticed someone had installed a keylogger. Guess they wanted to collect everyone's information (i.e. passwords and usernames) and return for them at the end of the day.
Technically, that is not online. Is it?
Correct me if I am wrong
Thanks
I've heard about this more and more lately, people are using camera phones to steal credit information. Think about it, if someone behind you were using a phone you wouldn't think twice about it, its just another person on a phone. They could secretly be taking a picture of your card.
-- Nic
It's not as bad as you state. I've been a victim of identity theft / credit card fraud / check fraud on several occasions. Each time, I was able to straighten things out without the gigantic hassle the urban myth pushes. My credit remains as stellar as it was before the incidents.
Even if there is a smaller chance of online identity theft, I would think banks would do all they could to prevent it: for example, if you want to do Bank of America online banking: They limit you to a 7 CHARACTER PASSSWORD!! I wrote in to complain, and I'm not going to go through with signing up for it until they change it! Does anyone online bank with a financial institution that takes better care than this? BTW, if you do online bank, don't forget to use firefox and clear that cache after logging off! I'm not paranoid, but you got to be careful nowadays!
I agree, the last four digits (like what are on recipts) would be more than enough.
-- Nic
Both Visa and Mastercard re-issued credit cards (through my bank) to me this month. They both said that my cards were on a large list of comprimised cards.
Anyone else have this happen over the holiday season?
Keep them maxed out. Sure they can have my credit card number, but just wait until they get that look of shame when they try to use it.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
When will people learn to differentiate between a scientific survey and an unscientific one?
Article: "Federal regulators warn that the Internet is the thriving frontier for identity theft, but 72 percent of the thefts of personal information for scams last year was done offline, a new report says."
They determined this based on 509 victoms of identify thieves interview by phone to answer 38 questions?!? Did they verify these were actual victoms and not some lonely person glad to talk on the phone with anyone showing interest?
Did they find out if the thieves were captured?
Did they find out how interviewed people found out about the original source of theft (are they just guessing or did the thief get caught and confess)?
Article: "The Javelin survey of 38 questions was based on telephone interviews with 4,000 consumers, including 509 victims of identity fraud."
How do victoms of identify fraud know how their info was stolen? First, they have to realize they are victoms--which many don't for months and in rare cases even years.
And even if they realize they're victoms, how do they know how their data was stolen?
They'd have to catch the thief to get the whole story.
This so-called article doesn't even mention how many out of the 509 interviewed victoms had cases where the thief was caught and the source of original theft was confirmed.
In work in a Court and every ID theft case I've seen in the last five years were committed by co-workers.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I just got TWO seemingly-identical eBay spoof messages to my eBay-registered email address (which contains 'ebay', but which doesn't otherwise collect spam). There is one difference between the messages, namely the URLs they point to:
. php
. php
http://d280599.u36.fast-host.com/ws/aw-cgi/verify
http://d281000.u36.fast-host.com/ws/aw-cgi/verify
The directory the php files are in is interesting. The whole thing is laid out in there. The email actually points to login.php, which brings you through a couple of intermediary pages before asking you for the goods. Submitting the verify.php page, blank, results in a little delay not present when you submit any of the other pages' forms -- presumably while verify.php is emailing the contents of the form fields somewhere.
I already left a note at the fast-host.com support page (although I'm not holding my breath, obviously). I tried calling them, but I got an unprofessional-sounding answering machine, leading me to think some guy is running fast-host.com out of his basement.
(*Sigh...*)
Shread your papers, or better yet, if you have a fireplace, burn them. That's if you don't need them anymore, and this is about financial papers.
I use President's Choice Financial You get 17 characters for my password there.
No fees. That's why I use them.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
That's not your number, Mrs. Whitcher. You should be using 567-68-0515 instead.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
This is very important if you are traveling somewhere that your ID isn't immediately recognizable. I made the mistake of having "Ask for ID" on several of my cards. I was refused purchases many times while in China, and had problems even at mainstream hotels paying for rooms, especially when no one spoke English. I was able to literally write "Ask for ID" on receipt slips a couple of times though ;)
Also, in Europe many hotels will retain your passport. What are you going to show for ID then when you go out? See if the bartender in a Dublin pub believes you when you try to convince him that your Minnesota driver's license is a valid ID and not some weird forgery! I had to beg my friends to pay for me once when a bar wouldn't accept my driver's license.
----- And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...UNLESS.
Bank of America took my photo. TWICE.
:( it was the first time I didn't look like a crazed serial killer in a polaroid shot, too.
4 weeks later, I finally got my new ATM/Check Card. With no photo on it. Man, I was bummed.
They limit you to a 7 CHARACTER PASSSWORD!
Bank of Montreal is worse -- all passwords are between 4 and 6 characters. In fact, their FAQ lists 6 characters as a "good" password. Scary.
See here. It is a test to see if anyone would notice the fake signatures/drawings/scribbles on the credit card receipts/transactions? It was funny to read and see the scanned images (love those drawings and unreadable scribbles).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
100% of my mothers were a victim of identity theft in 12% of the past 6 to 8 years. She contacted her local police department which actually 100% rather than 50%-assedly contacted .001% of the police in Maryland and eventually helped prosecute the perp. My mother was 100% out of 0% of her money except for the 13% of the time during the N days it took to 75% resolve the problem: She put a "watch" on her credit which for her was 100% free since she had been a victim of fraud and now gets a letter about 1 out of every 200 days saying that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to create a card with her SSN.
I began to get them together (under the counter -- we'd had people grab & dash cartons off the counter the week before). Then the guy handed me a visa card. I read the card, looked at him, and said: His response was something along the lines of "It's because I'm black, isn't it?". Ummm, no, it's because I just saw you talking to those kids outside, and these are the brands they smoke, and this is not your credit card. He insisted that it was his wife's card; I insisted his wife could pick it up from the RCMP then (an RCMP car pulled up coincidentally), and he ran off.
It makes sense. Murder and violent crime are the same - only 13% of violent crime (or was it murder? I don't recall) is committed against a stranger.
Goes to show, people always hurt the ones they love. (Or are supposed to love...)
Makes a person wonder how it all works together, what with the "sphere of familiarity" that people are supposed to have, where people have more empathy towards those they're most alike (or close to socially).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've seen people have a lot of trouble with this in the UK - to the point that they start signing 'ASK FOR ID' as their signature just to buy stuff.
Now consider what happens when you are in a non-english speaking country. There aren't many other countries where a minimum wage store clerk will understand what and why you've got that written in place of a signature.
I've given up using my smart credit cards because some stupid companies (i'm looking at you Taco Bell) dont train their staff on how to use them.
Usually they swipe my card and the device reads "Error: Use Chip" along with a diagram showing how to insert the chip... and they claim that my card must be chipped and i need to get a new one issued by my bank... sigh.
I can buy a magstripe writer and copy your details onto my card with my photo... might even make it easier to get away with since my photo is on the card.
Are you by any chance a customer of telephone company whose name starts with Q, ends with west, and who had the customer database compromised?
Was hard trying not to laugh when the credit card guy had to ask if i'd signed up for a site called BlackCockDown...
1. Take out every credit card and call every agency. Tell them that you do not want your information to be shared with anybody. That will reduce the risk of id theft due to less junk mail.
2. Get a good shredder. Shred every piece of useless mail with your address on it.
3. Sing up for paperless delivery of credit card statements and loans. Most companies use secure servers and if your ISP uses SSL then you can safely get mail in your inbox. The inbox can be archived and encrypted in the future.
4. Sign up for electronic bill pay through your credit card. Your bills will be paid on time and you will get less mail. Remeber, somebody can get your address w/o taking your mail.
5. Inspect your credit reports from three major agencies at least 2 times a year.
6. Call credit report agencies and tell them not to share your info with any other institutions. CC agencies love to do that, especially if you have loans.
7. If you get junk mail, see if you can opt-out. If you can, do that; otherwise, the companies who send you this shit can be in trouble.
Let me guess, you are in the starving student category?
For people that routinely spend thousands per month on a credit card (read:employed) this would be an immense hassle. I doubt many would agree with you. Something that is useful is the company emailing you when a purchase greater than a certain ammount posts to your card. I recevie an email from discover when something larger than $300 posts.
A "wife" I never met put her name on my checking account some years ago. I had to file a police report before the bank would cancel the bad checks. I lived in city #1, my bank was in city #2, and the band checks were passed in city #3. You wouldnt believe how hard it was to get oneof these three police stations to take a report. Forged checks are so commonplace that no one wants to bother.
I'd hate to multiple this by many accounts, if a larger identity was stolen.
in Soviet Russia, identities steal YOU.
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
Best option is to request your credit card company to have your picture printed on the CC. Citibank does this and hopefully all others will follow. I have had many cashiers commenting on how cool it is to have the picture on the CC.
Hmm, I think you missed a crucial part of the link you supplied. At the top they start off with a strong statement that sounds like what you're saying, but it has an asterisk... which leads to this statement:
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
...would be a sheet-feed scanner with intergrated shredder.
Someone had to do it.
Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon from a few years back.
Guy in a restaurant as he is handing his credit card to the waitress says to his companion "I don't trust giving my credit card information online"
When he waitress comes back for his signature she is wearing a fur coat.
Random garbage followed by a scam link is not "insightful".
Thank you.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
If you lose your credit card and someone charges 10k on it, Visa doesn't make you pay it unless they find out you're defrauding them.
If someone steals you debit card and charges 10k of your money, Wells Fargo doesn't give your money back untill they prove you aren't defrauding them.
The rules are the same and you are at the same risk, but in one case Visa is out the money during the investagation and in the other you are out the money.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Lets count the times that an identity theft occurred NOT by your close ones (relatives, neighbors, friends).
28% is on-line
39% is off-line by strangers (78%/2)
equals
67% by strangers.
So, 1/3 of the ID theft is by someone you know. 2/3 is strangers.
Tips to safeguard yourselves:
1. Look in your wallet/purse and remove SSN# from all ID cards
a) Medical card
b) Dental card
c) Old-man fraternity lodge
d) Military ID
e) and yes, your state drivers license (in dumb states only)
You can verbally give your SSN# to the cop/doctor/guard if and when you get challenged. And no, you won't be fined for tampering with the license. Three Federal Statues will protect you on this formerly malicious act (IANAL, but I did it).
2. Use shredders on the following containing account numbers, ID# or SSN#
a) bank statements
b) loan offers
c) utility bills
d) FAXes
e) virtually anything with your SSN# (and account #)
3. Perform lockout of your credit history. It is free to do. $10 to unlock it (how often do you apply for credits?)
4. Religiously apply for opt-out with insurance and financial institutions for your rights on Privacy Act. This hopefully eliminates sharing of your information.
Above steps goes a LONG WAY to drastically minimizing your vulnerability level and will go to bolstering your legal case against the identity theives, if and when, they get caught.
Carpa Diem!
Maybe a good idea to use a fictitious identity for any transactions where there is no need-to-know?
If I understand correctly, this is legal unless you use it to defraud, for example if the fictitious ID is used to incur debt and not pay it.
Most of the financial and insurance institutions who implement paperless statements send it UNENCRYPTED over SMTP protocol.
DON'T DO THIS STEP.
Only extract the statement from the institutions' secured web pages.
I assume that if it was a physical keylogger on the keyboard cable you pocketed it, and if it was software you deleted it, right?
Freedom: "I won't!"
Noticed that I intentionally left out the following step:
5. Ask for paperless statements from finacial and insurance institutions.
I discourage this step because there are a good number of these institutions still sending these statement by unsecured SMTP protocol (email for the uninitiated).
Those information will get replicated (whether you wanted them to or not) on and by various mail servers configured to do so. And stored eventually on recordable medias.
Such recordable medias are but not limited to:
1. The sender's "Send" folder
2. The sender's MTA recorder (SarBox and HIPAA requires that)
3. The mail relay's recorder (if any)
4. hackers' sniffing the pipes
5. The receiver's ISP mail queue
6. The receiver's corporate mail queue (SarBox/HIPAA)
7. The receiver's hard drive (easy to lift with Google Search Box)
God knows what kind of institution DOESN'T practice individual privacy preservation on these recorded medias.
In the 3 times that this happened to me in 2003, Once the company called me and asked me if I had made a purchase, which I didn't. The second time the card company said " the account was compromized". The 3rd time "my atm card/checking" somehow was taken and emptied in france. I have no idea how this card was taken. I only used it at atm's. Since then I use equifax.com to monitor all my accounts. All has been well since then.
Danger Will Robinson! You are now entering a condescending Unix user zone!
John Snook, from Champaign County, Illinois, broke into my car and stole about 3000USD worth of camera gear on loan to me, along with my briefcase, passport, drivers license, birth certificate, and every other id I had. He's a convicted felon, by the way. I've tracked him. He sold this id stuff to some mid-eastern bastards, but now I can't fly, travel, or drive without being stopped and harassed. I know he did this, because I have a witness to testify. He also broke into my parents home and stole their 23" tv. This is corroborated data. I am a physicist, and only deal in fact. John Snook is a crook.
Friends & family theft: 50% of all theft; 100% occurs offline
Stranger theft: 50% of all theft; 44% occurs offline, 56% occurs online
(Why? Because 72% of all theft occurs offline, and friends and family accounts for 50% of the total. Given 100 thefts, 50 of them are friends and family, and (72-50) are offline non-friends non-family, or 22. That leaves 28 thefts to occur online.)
If that conclusion is really true, then you can spin these numbers in the entirely opposite direction; the headline could be More Identity Theft By Strangers Online than Offline.
However, the article also says that online theft of bank and CC information is only 12% of all identity theft. 72% + 12% = 84%; who knows where the other 16% really are (maybe they're online theft but not bank/CC). Ain't lying with statistics grand?
Everything that comes in the mail with my name on it goes directly into mine, especially all of those #!@$% credit card applications
You're much more likely to have your identity stolen offline (72% of the cases).
To all my ex-friends who said I was wasting my time by staying online all the time, you see, it was to protect my finances!
In the US, the only debit card system is offline, meaning that it's as secure as a credit card. Up here in Canada, all debit is online, meaning you transact much as you would at an ATM: you swipe the card and enter your PIN to make the payment. So long as you cover the PIN pad with your hand, it's almost 100% secure. I pay debit for practically everything over $10, get a full list of transactions on my bank statement, and never have to worry about it being hijacked. Great system.
I tend to put this into the problem with retail in the US.
Most retail workers are paid minimum wage or slightly more. It has to be hard to get a significant pool of trustworthy applicants when the pay is so far below poverty. For someone making $5.15/hour and risking their lives to do it, the temptation to do this is probably pretty high.
For the consumers, we get crappy service and a higher risk of getting ripped off (as you related). We are of course addicted to the convenience of plastic (I am).
I don't think we'll see anything change at the retail level in the near future. The liability to the companies with these employees is too low for them to care so they have little incentive to offer more money to get/keep higher quality employees.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
What is this "shredding of mail" that everyone speaks of. I don't want to shred my Outlook Express! Besides, my LCD won't fit in a trash can.
How dare you call it "theft"? One of you even cracked up a phrase "data theft".
/., last time i checked, these were to be called "copies" because the original is still left intact.
:-)
On
They're sharing, not stealing, your IDs
ATM scanners
It's not difficult to make mailboxes that let you put letters into them without a key and only take them out with a key (or with thin pliers :-) Most apartment mailboxes use this for outgoing mail.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks