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Identity Theft Victim Gets Last Laugh
Ovid writes "Being a bit of a hypocrite, I sometimes whine about privacy in my blog. I do, however, try to be careful about not letting anyone get information about me they shouldn't and I rarely, if ever, use a credit card online. This is why I was surprised to find out one morning that identity thieves had racked up thousands of dollars one two of my credit cards. By early afternoon, I caught them and the police arrested them."
The canadian mounties have a new branch devoted to identity theft and they solved my case in a week. They are amazing.
Yup. I'm the same Ovid.
That's a fair question.
In this case, I happen to be "Curtis Poe", a grant manager for The Perl Foundation and in the small world of Perl, I'm moderately well-known. If I were caught making up stories like this, my reputation, and possibly my career, would be ruined.
Also, I hope to post the police report when I get it.
People sure have been jumping on this identity theft band wagon for about the last year. This isn't identity theft, it is Credit Card Fraud.
Identity theft would be if I opened up a credit card using your social or if I obtained a loan using your social.
Credit Card Fraud is stealing your credit card information and using it.
Too bad the media just keeps misleading people to believe the two are one and the same.
And all I can say is ... "SHRED THOSE CHECKS, DUMMY!". I have a discover card and get those all the time. I *Do NOT* toss them out. They get shredded in about 1 million little pieces.
I shred just about anything that might have any information about me, my family, or my bills or creditors/debtors. This guy coulda saved himself some grief. The kid prolly saw him check his mail from a PO box and then shake his head and toss the checks in the trash, where he retrieved them.
In fact, it bugs me Discover sends me those checks all the time. I never use them, probably never will, and wish they wouldn't send them so frequently.
FLR
I spend a lot of time on the road, so she audits the hell out of my cards. Turns out there were a couple charges at a local hotel - weird, because it was not anything I would book! Weirder yet when she realized it was her card. My wife's credit card info got swiped at Target.
Anyhow, the way the scam worked is they booked the room with hotels.com using my bride's card info. They checked in, tried to pay with a card that was expired (or did not work - they were not clear on that). When the hotel attempted to charge for the room service and the time they were there, it defaults to the card used to make the reservation. Card canceled, new one issued, no cost to us - but dang, you really have to watch your statements.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Geez. Call Discover (or almost any other credit card company) and they will never send them again.
I'd rather not have an easy-to-get number [SSN] used as my very identification. It's too easy here; I don't know about where you are
According to this page, "unless an organization can demonstrate that your [Social Insurance Number]" (equivalent to the American SSN) "is required by law, or that no alternative identifier would suffice to complete the transaction, you cannot be denied a product or service on the grounds of your refusal to provide your SIN."
I've had no problems withholding the number from landlords and banks.
Wrong answer. Thank you for playing. We have wonderful consolation prizes for you (or not.)
For what it's worth, and as I noted earlier in this thread, I'm actually fairly well-known in the Perl community. I'm a grant manager for the Perl Foundation, a scheduled speaker at the next OSCON, and an occasional technical book reviewer for O'Reilly. If I dared to create a lie this huge, my reputation would be ruined. I generally get job offers because of who I am. That would go away. Regardless of what you may think of my story, I'm not so stupid as to make this up.
They did have a photocopy of ID of one of the thieves. However, the registration (made through hotels.com) was still billed to me. And as for your info about the credit card companies, I know nothing about your experience, but it is vastly different from mine. If you have any credit cards, call and ask to speak to their fraud department (or, more likely, navigate through all of the damned menus they have.) I'm sure they'll be happy to set you straight.
There are private transactions where the government mandates that an individual provide a business with their SSN, primarily anything taxable, like hiring somebody, or opening a bank account that pays interest, and by now they mandate it for most bank accounts even if they don't pay interest, and they mandate it for any medical transaction involving Medicare or most other government-funded health care.
For transactions where the government does not mandate that a business collect an SSN, they almost never place any restrictions on the business's activities with it, and they don't say that the business can't refuse to deal with you if you don't provide it - you're on your own.
There are a very small number of cases where some government, mostly state, places limits on private use of SSNs, or otherwise insists on some kinds of privacy protection. But in practice, those are usually not effective.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No offense, but you sound like someone that has never actually been mugged before. And it's no surprise the slashdot community found your misguided words to be insightful.
I have been mugged. Several times. And if the person mugging you has a gun don't - I repeat, DON'T - do anything sudden. You are not in the movies and you aren't going to be a hero. Any sudden movements could easily scare someone who probably isn't very stable at the moment. And believe me, you don't want to add any stress to that unstable persons life when they have a gun in your back.
At least, not in my neighborhood.