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FTC Recruiting Identity Theft Victims
coondoggie writes "In an effort to buttress its enforcement and better understand the scourge that is identity theft, the Federal Trade Commission said today its plans to conduct a wide-ranging study of victims of the crime.
The FTC is looking for people harmed by the crime and said the survey will examine the remedies available to victims under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act). Among other things, the FACT Act gave consumers the right to place fraud alerts on their credit files if they are, or suspect they may become, victims of identity theft; block information on their credit reports that resulted from identity theft; and obtain copies of their credit reports free of charge."
They asked me for my social security number and date of birth to verify I was the person they meant to call and told me they'd be getting back to me real soon.
JADBP
Recruiting, eh? I can imagine the phone calls going something like this:
"Hi, Mr. Phillips, I'm from the FTC, and we've heard that you've recently been the victim of identity theft."
"Yes, yes that's true!"
"To verify that the study is accurate, could I have your date of birth please?"
"Sure, it's September 17th, 1964."
"I have the first digit of your SSN as '6', is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Could you read off the rest of it for me?"
As long as the FBI is mandating that credit card fraud is "identity theft" there will never be any sort of accurate numbers as to real, honest-to-goodness identity theft. Today, every time someone uses your credit card number on an online site and the charge is really submitted, this is considered "identity theft".
The truth is that use of SSNs and fraudulently applying for loans and such is incredibly rare. It is so rare as to almost not be a problem - except the folks at Life Lock and others do not want you to find this out. They want to get their money from you for protecting you from something that almost never happens.
Almost everyone I know has been a "victim" of credit card fraud. Only problem was, they weren't really the victim. The merchant was. I've never heard of anyone actually losing anything because of credit card fraud. Now, if you use a debit card instead of a credit card you are asking for trouble because you will lose with those. No, I don't know anyone that has lost money - probably because they had more sense than to use a debit card for purchases.
Ha what a joke! Ever since doing the "free credit report" I've been getting spammed by trans union offering their pay for service. Frankly it's MY life, MY history and MY credit data why the #&$%@#%& should I have to pay them at ALL to correct their constant screw ups? They are making money selling it they should be forced to pay ME to use it.
THEY SHOULD ALSO BE 100% LIABLE WHEN IT IS ABUSED!!!!! Credit reporting agencies are the source of the problem and the enablers of credit fraud.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Now I don't know who I am, or why I have several fake ID's in my posession. I don't know why I am efficient in killing heavily trained soldiers with my bare hands. I only know one thing: My name is Jason Bourne.
I tried volunteering for this
But they said I had already signed up yesterday.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
These people have some balls, it's actually kind of funny.
They sent me a letter in the mail pretending to be my bank, saying there are suspicious charges and to call this fraud number. Had the right mailing address and all of the logo's..etc
Of course the number was a phishing scam! They were asking me security questions to verify I was the cardholder, and little did I know my card was already maxed out 4 days ago. I'm guessing they wanted to reuse my information to call my bank and request the credit limit to be increased so they could keep on spending.
Fortunately my bullshit detector went off and I hung up, cross referenced the number..etc which confirmed my suspicions. I called the actual fraud line about 30 seconds later to take care of my slip up, and that's when I found out about all of the other charges. The BS part about it all is that none of the charges ever showed up on my online transaction history, so even if I were checking that by the hour I never would have been tipped off.
Anyway these guys can be pretty sneaky, but I was really disappointed in Chase for not having the transactions posted. At least I'm told that I won't have to pay any of the fees.
In the past, I have conducted background investigations for the DoD as a contractor. I came across some very interesting credit histories on a guy and had to ask him some questions. I cannot go into details but, simply put:
When he was too young to work, someone began working under his name and SSN. He did not discover this until he was in his late teens. When he contacted the IRS, the IRS was concerned, but they MADE TWO SEPARATE ACCOUNTS UNDER THE SAME SSN TO DISTINGUISH THE TWO.
This was quite alarming to me, though it satisfied my goals in the investigation. I could not understand how the IRS would take such a haphazard approach to dealing with identity theft. How can they continue to allow a person to work, obviously illegally, under a stolen identity? Yes, I know the IRS merely collects taxes, but they were collecting from a stolen identity long after they were made aware.
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From this, the flaw is lack of governmental intercooperation regarding identity theft. I cannot attest to present time, but in 2005, the IRS was still allowing the thief to work and pay taxes.
The employer (pretty big company) and location were well known, yet the 'thief' was not stopped over several years. ........ I can only hope our various branches are now working together to protect our citizens first.