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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."
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.
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.
Call me crazy, but before the marketroids got a hold of it, it was known as "fraud".
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.
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.
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
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 --
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.
Haha, where I'm living (Austria), everyone has locked mail boxes at the moment. Only the mailman has got a second key to the box.
However, our mail system is getting privatized, and the new mail services demand access to these locked boxes, so they can deliver mail as well. Now legislation has RULED to replace our locked mail boxes with UNLOCKED ones, in order that everyone can access them.
May those idiot politicians rot in hell.
Thats why I think the credit cards should work with a preapproval system.
Basically for any purchase larger than say $50 you have to call the company and get the purchase approved. The company then gives you a transaction number that will charge to your card number once, but then never work again.
The phone system could have a voice identifier and maybe a limit to what numbers could call to approve things. (Home phone only so people would have to break into your house or at least hack your lines to accomplish much.)
The phone system would be a point of failure for security, but at least it would be a centralized point of failure rather than trusting basically everyone on the planet not to steal your card.
If my bank had put this much thought into their system I would certainly pay to use it if I made many credit purchases.
The point they're trying to make in the article is NOT to ignore the problem. RTFA, mayhap? Meh, what was I thinking?
Anyway, the point they're trying to make is that the leading reason people who don't shop online give for not shoping online is that they're credit card will be stolen. Consumer's Power says that the reason few people use their online payment system is that they're afraid their credit cards will get stolen. The reason so many people say they won't use online banking is that - suprise suprise - their information will get stolen.
Those same people, however, have no compunction against handing their cards over to some random guy in a restaraunt and having it taken into another room and then brought back a couple minutes later. They don't think twice when the lady at the grocery store writes their driver's license number on the sheet with the check number. Doesn't worry them at all any time that the credit card is physically in another person's control during a transaction, and worst of all, they never even think that it might be a bad idea to throw away their bank statements.
The article is about perspective. You can do far more (and there is far more you SHOULD do) offline to protect your identity than you can and should do online.
Online: Don't fall for stupid phish scams.
Offline: Write ASK FOR ID on the back of the card.
Shred your statements.
Don't use your credit card at restaraunts.
Make sure your grocery store has one of the credit card scanners where YOU run it through the machine, and not the cashier.
Most of these come down to the whole thing where all the firewalls and encryption in the world is useless when somebody steals your computer. The weakest points are physical, not digital.
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.
Works great, except that he's lost two locks in three years. But, he bought about six locks all keyed the same way, and they're pretty inexpensive.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
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.
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.
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?