Americans at Risk of Identity Theft as They File their Tax Returns (betanews.com)

Ian Barker, writing for BetaNews: As we move into the tax return season a new study reveals that attitudes to identity theft and a pattern of poor practices are leaving much of the public vulnerable. Data security and ID theft protection company CyberScout has carried out its second annual Tax Season Risk Report and finds 58 percent of Americans are not worried about tax fraud in spite of federal reports of 787,000 confirmed identity theft returns in 2016, totaling more than $4 billion in potential fraud. Among other findings are that only 35 percent of taxpayers demand that their preparers use two-factor authentication to protect their clients' personal information. Less than a fifth (18 percent) use an encrypted USB drive to save important documents like tax worksheets, W-2s, 1099s or 1040s. And another 38 percent either store tax documents on their computer's hard drive or in the cloud, approaches that are susceptible to a variety of hacks.

Comments

Re:scare mongering getting old

[Jason Levine]

Another problem are credit companies who treat identity theft with a shrug and a "that's your problem." Someone obtained my name, SSN, DOB, and address. How, I'll never know. They opened a Capital One credit card in my name. The fact that the mother's maiden name was wrong on the form wasn't a red flag. Neither was the immediate address change to another state. Nor was "my wife" calling to request a $5,000 cash advance before the card was activated.

When the card arrived at my house (a lucky quirk of them paying for rush delivery and THEN changing the address), I called CapitalOne. First, they insisted that it couldn't have been fraud, asking if my wife opened it without my knowledge. (She was next to me, freaking out about the situation. That'd be a no.) Then, they admitted that it might be fraud, closed the card out, but refused to give me more information. They literally told me "If we give you the address on the account and you go there and shoot them, we'd be liable." Apparently, they didn't think anything about liability if they opened an account under my name, ignoring a lot of red flags. They even stone-walled the police - telling them to call one phone number that was "manned" by an answering machine whose messages were never returned.

Eventually, I gave up on trying to push the investigation forward and just froze my credit. For all I know, the thieves who stole my identity are still out there racking up debt on other people's credit.