(Inspired by Iain Watts' Networking Research Project called “Identity Theft,” June 2012.)
In recent years I’ve become ever more intensely aware
of the possibility of identity theft. It happens to innocent people more often
than you know. The guilty ones who actually do the stealing can do it in many
ingenious ways and use the personal information that they’ve discovered in
various ways to illegally obtain others’ money. Not only that, the victims of
identity theft have their lives turned upside down and inside out, while trying
to figure out how it could have happened to them. Identity thieves, from what I’ve
gleaned, are somehow able to obtain key pieces of personal information, such as
your SIN (Social Insurance Number), credit card number(s), mother’s maiden
name, home address and date of birth, to name a few. With this critical key
information, they’ve been known to gain citizenship in or the right to
immigrate to this country or even use the information to apply for a job.
Basically, there are two main kinds of identity theft: account takeover and true name theft. The accounts that the identity thief takes over can take many forms: e-mail, Facebook, bank or credit card accounts. At this point, I am personally most familiar with the fraudulent use of bank accounts because a similar incident happened to me when I lost my driver’s license last year. Fortunately, the woman who pretended to be me in my bank was ultimately prevented from accessing my bank account due to not having a bank access card and password, but still, the whole thing freaked me out. I had my bank put a system-wide message on my bank account that would pop up whenever anyone tried to access my bank account at any time or at any branch. It would prevent her from doing any bank business in my name without first showing proper identification to the bank’s officers. So far, this has been a very effective preventive measure.
Basically, there are two main kinds of identity theft: account takeover and true name theft. The accounts that the identity thief takes over can take many forms: e-mail, Facebook, bank or credit card accounts. At this point, I am personally most familiar with the fraudulent use of bank accounts because a similar incident happened to me when I lost my driver’s license last year. Fortunately, the woman who pretended to be me in my bank was ultimately prevented from accessing my bank account due to not having a bank access card and password, but still, the whole thing freaked me out. I had my bank put a system-wide message on my bank account that would pop up whenever anyone tried to access my bank account at any time or at any branch. It would prevent her from doing any bank business in my name without first showing proper identification to the bank’s officers. So far, this has been a very effective preventive measure.
However,
true name theft involves the thief assuming the victim’s identity. When this
happens, an identity thief can then do a number of things in the victim’s name:
open new bank accounts and access them for funds; open new credit card accounts
and charge them up; buy a new car on a fraudulent car loan or even take out a
second mortgage on a home already owned by the victim. I’ve been told that
these two different forms of identity theft are difficult to track by police,
and it often takes a lot of time to catch the thief.
This
year, I was unfortunate enough to have it happen yet again. Although I was
aware of some of the sneaky and underhanded methods of such thieves, I was
still taken by surprise. I knew enough not to give out my personal information
on Internet websites with which I did not deal regularly—I knew this was called
“phishing.” Although I did my best to delete e-mail messages from strangers,
especially those e-mails that had attachments, and I never gave my password for
any of my accounts to anyone, not even those I knew well, a theft still
happened to me and you’ll never guess how. Someone must have gone through my
garbage and found an old bill with my name and address on it and an account
number of some sort. Could it be that easy to become a victim of an identity
thief? Yes, and by the time I found out about the damage this person caused me,
it took a long time to prove and correct it.
How
could I have prevented this from happening? It became clear to me, only over
time, that the only sure-fire way to prevent true name identity theft was to shred all important papers before disposing
of them in the garbage. Such papers as old bills, credit card statements, bank
statements/passbooks, and so on, would be of no use when they are completely
shredded. I have been a pack rat for such a long time now that I hardly ever
throw such things out—I keep them for a long time, locked up at home in a
secure box. But still, it’s something that can
happen.
Eventually,
when these things become too old, I rip them up first and then toss them into
the garbage. As far as I know, nothing with my name and address or any account
information could be retrieved from the trash except in small pieces. I also
got used to cutting up old credit cards and bank cards and any other cards that
had my account information on them. My annual tax returns are either kept at
home or in my work office in a locked file cabinet. They are all submitted
online anyway, which I am told is the safest way to submit tax returns to the
government. But you still have to keep the hardcopies handy for at least seven years.
After that you can safely get rid of them.
So,
the only way I could come up with in which an identity thief could get my
personal information was to just ask me for it. I thought it would have had to
be someone I trusted, of course, but who? I racked my brain trying to figure
out who I trusted that would do such a thing to me. Finally, I decided it had
to have been a fake website that had somehow gotten the desired personal
information from me and used it fraudulently. I suppose it must have appeared
to me that the website was asking for my information to verify my account, but
on second thought, it was probably asking for too much information for that
purpose. I should have used my best judgment about such things since it was
really the only thing that would have prevented that particular fake website
from getting the personal information they needed.
When
I think about it now, there was
another incident—when I was mugged, right at the back door to my apartment
building about 15 years ago. At dusk, a man just jogging by attacked me when my
back was turned. In that case, my tote bag containing my wallet was stolen and
it contained my personal information: SIN card, birth certificate, bank card,
credit cards, health card and driver’s license. Incredibly, there wasn’t anything
I owned of a personal nature that wasn’t in my tote bag that day. Later, my
bag, minus all my personal stuff and money, was discovered much later in a
dumpster. By that time, I had informed all the proper authorities to freeze my
bank and credit card accounts, but I never saw my SIN card, health card, driver’s
license or birth certificate again. To my knowledge, these items were never
fraudulently used against me—I expect by now that they never will. I was just
lucky that time. Regardless, it took at least six weeks to get all new bank
cards, credit cards, my driver’s license and my health card back again—apparently,
a “drop in the bucket” in terms of time when compared to true name identity
theft gone amuck.
One
thing is for certain—I will never forget the feeling of being invaded, much
like a person whose home has been invaded by an intruder. When something like
that happens, your life is now out there for all to see. You have no privacy of
any kind anymore. And the idea that the intruder can take your life over by
stealing your identity becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Only if
you are extremely lucky can you recover fully and live your life again the way
you were meant to.
copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
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