Anytime you get together with a large group, ask the people to raise their hands if they've been a victim of id theft. You'll be amazed how many hands go up. What's more difficult is finding out how it happened. Here's a Day In the Life of an ID theft victim. Could any of this happen to you?
8:00 a.m. Drop the school forms off at the school's front office. Hmm, that new clerk seems awfully glad to have your daughter's medical release, the one with her Social Security Number on it. 1
10:00 a.m. After yoga class, you stop by the grocery store and visit the ATM machine in front. It's from your bank, which is great because you won't get extra charges, but it sits unattended at night, when anyone could attach a skimmer on it and steal your card's information and your password. 2
12:00 p.m. Meeting your best friend for lunch at the new Italian restaurant. It's your turn to pay so you hand your credit card to the waitress. She's always so nice, gaves both of you free refills on your iced tea. Did it seem like she took extra long to bring the card back to the table? I wonder if she was copying the numbers down. 3
2:00 pm Back at home now. What a great lunch! It reminded you how much you like panini, so you go online to buy a sandwich press. Maybe next time you'll treat your friend to a homemade grilled sandwich. Anyway, doing an online search to find the lowest price, you found a new shopping site that is much cheaper than Amazon. You go ahead and order, putting in your credit card information. I don't think the confirmation page had https in the address and I don't think I saw any lock icon either. I wonder who this company is and whether or not you should have trusted them. 4
4:00 pm Started thinking about next summer already and you decide you want to stay in this adorable new B&B just outside one of your favorite National Parks. Reservations are hard to get so you decide to call and take care of it directly with the reservations agent. You find yourself talking with an employee of the owner, who is happy to take your information, and promises you'll get a confirmation email. The email never comes and you realize you don't even know who you gave all your information to: name, address, telephone and credit card information. Did your reservation get into the system? 5
7:30 pm Dinner has been cleared away and the kids are working on their homework. Maybe you can start working on the family taxes. You've got a fantastic wifi network in your home that really makes it easy for you to be productive in any room of the house. You go into your den to find some peace and quiet and never noticed someone parked outside your house with their own laptop. Could they be hacking into your network and monitoring your activity?6
9:00 pm Your son loves to discover new music and is really excited about the new peer-to-peer file sharing system he's found. A lot of his friends use it to illegally download music and videos but your son promises he'll only use it for lesser known bands who love to give their music away for free. But he really didn't know how to set it up and right now any of the other people on the file sharing system have full access to your family's computers. Uh oh. Could someone install keystroke logging software and steal all your passwords? 7
11:00pm Time for bed. By now, your head hurts and you don't even know why. Tomorrow, you may be in a world of id theft hurt so you'd better get a good night's sleep.
Footnotes
1. ID theft for minors is on the rise. Most often it's a family member that uses a child's information when their own credit is ruined. We also hear of illegal immigrants using children's social security numbers to get jobs and apply for apartments and loans. And there's an active black market where people trade these social security numbers since they are usually not associated with bad credit and are likely to be available for years. Avoid sharing your child's SSN. Ask why the office or agency needs it. Ask how it will be stored and who will have access to it. Check with the credit agencies to make sure they don't have any reports on your child.
2. Skimmers are devices that criminals slide over the regular ATM access panel to steal the magnetic strip's information off your ATM and debit cards along with your password. There's been a big problem on the East Coast with skimmers being put on rest stop ATMs since there is usually little supervision of these machines late at night. Any unattended machine is vulnerable to this crime. What you can do: only use ATM machines inside your bank. If anything looks odd about the machine you are using, choose another one.
3. Most waitstaff in restaurants are honest but a few have been known to steal credit card information in two key ways. Either they simply write the information down (sometimes slipping into the bathroom to do so) or they carry a pocket size skimming machine to steal card information on a larger scale. Pay with cash or pay close attention to the waiter when they have your card.
4. Stick with online vendors you know and trust. Simply searching for the lowest price can get you in trouble.
5. This is how I had my credit card information stolen once. Try to make reservations using online systems that use common security features such as https or showing the lock icon. Ask to speak with the reservations manager and make sure you get a name.
6. Lock down that wifi - read our article about simple techniques for ensuring no one has unauthorized access to your family's network.
7. If you don't understand how peer-to-peer works, you're going to get in trouble. Make sure the program is severely restricted to the music folder or whatever files you are sharing with the public. Or just uninstall it and save yourself one possible id theft entry point.