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Identity Theft Through A Lifetime

Identity thieves discriminate to some degree. Anyone — young or old, rich or poor — can be a victim, but fraudsters generally prefer the easiest targets.

While most Americans are doing more to protect themselves from identity theft, others allow themselves to be more vulnerable. The greatest risk is to the 25- to 34-year-old age group. The good news is that as we get older, we’re less likely to become a victim.

“What we’re finding is that once somebody gets past the age of 44, the numbers start going down,” says Keith Anderson, a spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission.

Still, 8.1 million adult Americans last year discovered that ID thieves had breached their personal data and committed one or more crimes against them, according to a February report by Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin Strategy & Research.

Children – In February, the FTC reported about 5 percent of all identity theft complaints involved victims under 18.

Teens and young adults – Most of the time, parents don’t even think to check their child’s credit report. But by the time the child graduates from high school, it could be too late. To complicate matters, teens and young adults are among the least likely to take steps to prevent identity theft. College students are notorious for leaving doors unlocked, computers unsecured and credit card bills in plain sight of potential thieves — behaviors that invite trouble. If you have roommates, you should always keep paper statements under lock and key. Paper is a risky financial document. Six percent of all ID fraud comes from paper documents.

Young families – Newlyweds just starting out generally have positive outlooks, believing that the best days are ahead of them. But if their credit card or bank account information were filched somehow, they may face tough times ahead instead. If an ID thief gets a person’s checks or debit card and drains his bank account, he generally has 48 hours to report the fraud. After that brief window, the person’s on the hook for $500. If he doesn’t report fraud within 60 days, his liability is unlimited.

Seniors – 89 percent of consumers age 50 to 64 said they regularly shred unnecessary documents containing sensitive information. Some 69 percent said they would consider initiating a credit freeze to protect their information. In the 65-plus age category, nearly 79 percent shred documents, and 53 percent would consider initiating a freeze.

Read the full article here : http://biz.yahoo.com/brn/080527/25449.html?.v=1

Two Defendants Sentenced for Identity Theft Conspiracy

ID Theft Seminar Includes Document Shredding Service

Identity theft continues to be an increasing crime, and a free seminar is designed to help you avoid being the next victim.

The seminar, called “Stop Identity Theft,” will be Thursday morning at the Florence-Lauderdale Coliseum.

A document shredding service will be available in conjunction with the seminar.

The seminar is presented by the Better Business Bureau of the Shoals, Listerhill Credit Union and University of North Alabama Small Business Development Center.

Christy Yeiser, regional vice president over the bureau in the Shoals, said each person can bring up to two bags or boxes of documents, checkbooks and files that have sensitive information. Those will be shredded by a professional shredding company in the area. She said it is not necessary to remove staples and paper clips.

You can go through the line more than once, if you have additional items.

Paul Davis, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, will conduct a seminar from 9-11 a.m.

Registration for the seminar begins at 8:30 a.m. Those who register will receive information on detecting and preventing identification theft. Refreshments and door prizes also will be available.

Yeiser said there were more than 8.1 million cases of ID theft nationwide in 2007. That resulted in some $45 billion in losses.

“Over half of that was traced to some type of paper trail,” Yeiser said.

That includes items that could be taken from your mailbox or garbage, or even from your own possession, she said.

“Only one-third of ID thefts occurred online or through some other electronic means,” Yeiser said.

“It is extremely important for businesses to safely destroy personal information of their customers and employees and it is equally important for all residents to shred their sensitive documents.”

She said identity theft can result in a long nightmare of problems, depending on how much damage the thief did with your identification, and how many places he or she purchased items from while using your identification.

The Environmental Benefits of Shredding Paper

Shredding paper is not only a safe and secure way of preventing valuable information from getting into the hands of the wrong people. It is also a great way to contribute to helping the environment.

Shredding companies will recycle whatever paper they’ve shredded, allowing your garbage to be used again instead of wasting space in a landfill. Also, by recycling the shredded paper, you help prevent the destruction of more virgin forest normally used to produce more, non-eco-friendly paper.

And if you don’t use a shredding company, shredded paper can still be put to better use than un-shredded paper. Enough shredded paper can be used as a substitute for Styrofoam peanuts when packing products. Not only is this cost-effective, but the shredded paper is less harmful to the environment than the Styrofoam. Shredded paper can also be composted rather than thrown into a landfill. Composting helps break the paper down naturally.  And, of course, you can always still recycle the paper yourself.

By shredding paper instead of throwing it out, you open up numerous environmentally healthy alternatives to disposing of it rather than simply throwing it in the dumpster.

Northwest Airlines Takes off with LifeLock to Protect WorldPerks Members from Identity Theft

TEMPE, Ariz.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In a strategic alliance to further safeguard the personal information of consumers, LifeLock® CEO Todd Davis has announced today a partnership with Northwest Airlines (NYSE: NWA – News) to offer LifeLock’s industry leading identity theft protection services to the airline’s WorldPerks® members. WorldPerks members will receive a discount on LifeLock’s service as well as 1,500 WorldPerks miles upon an annual enrollment with LifeLock. Members will be required to provide their WorldPerks number upon subscribing to LifeLock to receive the bonus miles.

“Security plays an integral role in airports throughout America and the security of personal information and individual identities is just as important,” said Davis. “We applaud the efforts that Northwest Airlines is making to protect their WorldPerks members from identity theft.”

As the industry leader in identity theft protection, LifeLock requests on behalf of its clients that the national credit bureaus place fraud alerts on its members’ credit files, and requests that members’ names be removed from pre-approved credit card offer and junk mail lists. It is backed by a $1 million service guarantee. In addition to the proactive identity theft protection measures provided by LifeLock, members are also entitled to LifeLock’s WalletLock™, eRecon™ and TrueAddress™ services. WalletLock works to cancel and replace all documents and personal identifying information inside a wallet if it is lost or stolen. eRecon is a regular patrol of the Internet in search of social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers and email addresses of LifeLock members to protect against the information being illegally traded or sold online. LifeLock’s TrueAddress service searches to see if members have had a change of address form filed and alert them if there are changes made that they may be unaware of.

In February 2008, the Federal Trade Commission released its annual report continuing with the annual trend that identity theft tops the list of consumer complaints. In 2007, identity theft cost Americans $1.2 billion dollars, the highest amount ever. A multi-billion dollar crime, identity theft is non-discriminatory, hitting Americans in every age range from infants to seniors. Already this year, more than 448 organizations – from financial institutions to healthcare providers – have lost client information affecting more than 127.6 million Americans.

“We are proud to partner with LifeLock to offer their proven identity theft protection service to our WorldPerks members,” said Bob Soukup, managing director of WorldPerks marketing.

We believe strongly that it our responsibility to protect the safety of our WorldPerks members to the best of our ability,” said EXECUTIVE NAME, EXECUTIVE TITLE with Northwest Airlines. “Helping to safeguard the identities of our members is paramount and we are proud to partner with LifeLock to offer their simple, proven identity theft protection service to our WorldPerks members.”

More than 70 different businesses offer WorldPerks members the opportunity to earn WorldPerks miles, just by doing business with companies they do business with every day. Mileage partners encompass car, hotel, financial services, dining and retail and will soon include grocery, energy and dry cleaning businesses. For a complete list of WorldPerks partner business, or to enroll as a WorldPerks member, log on to www.nwa.com/worldperks/.

About LifeLock®

Famous for its CEO giving out his Social Security Number in advertising and national press, the company is experiencing strong growth. Located in a secure facility in Tempe, Arizona, LifeLock® (www.lifelock.com) is a private company backed by Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners. Winner of the 2007 American Business Award for the Best Radio Advertising Campaign, LifeLock was a finalist for 10 other ABA awards, including Best New Company and Best New Product/Service. Recently the company was named recipient of the Red Herring 100 Global Award as one of the Top 100 start-up’s in the world.

MetLife Enhances Travel Assistance with Identity Theft Solutions

Why Use Shredding Services?

Shredding documents has become a normal routine in business. It destroys important and confidential information in a way that eliminates any opportunity of identity theft. However, as a business grows, so does the amount of confidential documents it needs to dispose of, and doing it on your own can take up too much time and require too much personal equipment. So shredding services can help.

Using shredding services are an easy and effective way to help your business get rid of old documents, while keeping the information on them confidential and secure. With the inclusion of a shredding service, a burden can be lifted from you and your employees’ backs. Rather than having to go through the time-wasting and expensive process of owning and maintaining your own shredding equipment, a shredding service uses its own equipment, does the shredding for you, and disposes of the shredded materials under your supervision.

Shredding services are affordable too. Most companies let you choose whichever payment works best for you (frequency of service vs. time the service takes), so that you can make sure to get the best deal. On top of that, a pound of paper costs mere pennies to be disposed of.

Not only are shredding services a great way to help your business get rid of documents, they can also be good for the environment. The waste produced by shredding services is recycled and helps prevent deforestation.

Recruiting a shredding service for your business is a step in the right direction for working in a safer and more efficient environment.

Medical Records, Identity Theft, and the Proper Disposal

Identity theft is an all too common problem in the Internet age. With the growth of online shopping and buying, all it takes is for someone to find your credit card number and purchase products from websites with complete anonymity. It’s important to keep your private information private and out of reach of identity thieves.

But your credit card isn’t the only thing that can fall victim to identity theft. Medical records with your health insurance information listed can be used by identity thieves to receive health services under your name. Though congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, encouraging the transactions of health services to be performed electronically, hard-copy records can still be received. And if they are not disposed of properly, anyone can get their hands on them.

This is why it is good idea to implement shredding services when you no longer need your medical records. These services will properly and confidentially destroy any medical records you have, allowing you to dispose of them without having to worry about them getting into the wrong hands.

When choosing a shredding service, make sure that it is one you can trust. Have the employees undergone background checks?  Work with a service that can come to you, allowing you to supervise the destruction of your documents to your satisfaction and confirm that everything was done correctly. And to be sure your shredded documents are being used in a practical and environmental manner, choose a shredding service that recycles the papers you’ve shredded.

It is important to keep yourself safe from identity theft, but it’s also important that if you need help, you do it with a company you trust.  A reliable shredding service can be one you keep going back to, developing a strong and secure relationship. So choose wisely.

Stimulus Payments Scams

IRS Warns of New E-Mail and Telephone Scams Using the IRS Name ; Advance Payment Scams Starting

Updated April 21, 2008

Some people have received phone calls about the economic stimulus payments, in which the caller impersonates an IRS employee. The caller asks the taxpayer for their Social Security and bank account numbers, claiming that the IRS needs the information to complete the processing of the taxayer’s payment. In reality, the IRS uses the information contained on the taxpayer’s tax return to process stimulus payments, rather than contacting taxpayers by phone or e-mail.

An e-mail claiming to come from the IRS about the “2008 Economic Stimulus Refund” tells recipients to click on a link to fill out a form, apparently for direct deposit of the payment into their bank account. This appears to be an identity theft scheme to obtain recipients’ personal and financial information so the scammers can clean out their victims’ financial accounts. In reality, taxpayers do not have to fill out a separate form to get a stimulus payment or have it directly deposited; all they had to do was file a tax return and provide direct deposit information on the return.

IR-2008-11, Jan. 30, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers to beware of several current e-mail and telephone scams that use the IRS name as a lure. The IRS expects such scams to continue through the end of tax return filing season and beyond.

The IRS cautioned taxpayers to be on the lookout for scams involving proposed advance payment checks. Although the government has not yet enacted an economic stimulus package in which the IRS would provide advance payments, known informally as rebates to many Americans, a scam which uses the proposed rebates as bait has already cropped up.

The goal of the scams is to trick people into revealing personal and financial information, such as Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers, which the scammers can use to commit identity theft.

Typically, identity thieves use a victim’s personal and financial data to empty the victim’s financial accounts, run up charges on the victim’s existing credit cards, apply for new loans, credit cards, services or benefits in the victim’s name, file fraudulent tax returns or even commit crimes. Most of these fraudulent activities can be committed electronically from a remote location, including overseas. Committing these activities in cyberspace allows scamsters to act quickly and cover their tracks before the victim becomes aware of the theft.

People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years — and their hard-earned money — cleaning up the mess thieves have made of their reputations and credit records. In the meantime, victims may lose job opportunities, may be refused loans, education, housing or cars, or even get arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.

The most recent scams brought to IRS attention are described below.

Rebate Phone Call

At least one scheme using the word “rebate” as part of the lure has been identified. In that scam, consumers receive a phone call from someone identifying himself as an IRS employee. The caller tells the targeted victim that he is eligible for a sizable rebate for filing his taxes early. The caller then states that he needs the target’s bank account information for the direct deposit of the rebate. If the target refuses, he is told that he cannot receive the rebate.

This phone call is a scam. No legislation has yet been enacted that would allow the IRS to provide advance payments to taxpayers or that determines the details of those payments. Moreover, the IRS does not force taxpayers to use direct deposit. Those who opt for direct deposit do so by completing the appropriate section of their tax return, with bank routing and account information, when they file; the IRS does not gather the information by telephone.

Refund e-Mail

The IRS has seen several variations of a refund-related bogus e-mail which falsely claims to come from the IRS, tells the recipient that he or she is eligible for a tax refund for a specific amount, and instructs the recipient to click on a link in the e-mail to access a refund claim form. The form asks the recipient to enter personal information that the scamsters can then use to access the e-mail recipient’s bank or credit card account.

In a new wrinkle, the current version of the refund scam includes two paragraphs that appear to be directed toward tax-exempt organizations that distribute funds to other organizations or individuals. The e-mail contains the name and supposed signature of the Director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations business division.

This e-mail is a phony. The IRS does not send unsolicited e-mail about tax account matters to individual, business, tax-exempt or other taxpayers.

Filing a tax return is the only way to apply for a tax refund; there is no separate application form. Taxpayers who wish to find out if they are due a refund from their last annual tax return filing may use the “Where’s My Refund?” interactive application on this Web site, IRS.gov. The only official IRS Web site is located here at http://www.irs.gov/.

Audit e-Mail

Another new scam brought to IRS attention contains features not seen before by the IRS. Using a technique calculated to get almost anyone’s attention, the e-mail notifies the recipient that his or her tax return will be audited. This is the first scam of which the IRS is aware that uses this to get the victim to respond.

Unusual for a scam e-mail, it may contain a salutation in the body addressed to the specific recipient by name. Most scam e-mails seen by the IRS are sent using the same technique used by spammers, in which hundreds of thousands of messages are sent to potential victims based on Internet address. Because of the volume, the typical scam e-mail is not personalized.

This e-mail instructs the recipient to click on links to complete forms with personal and account information, which the scammers will use to commit identity theft.

This e-mail is a phony. The IRS does not send unsolicited, tax-account related e-mails to taxpayers.

Changes to Tax Law e-Mail

This bogus e-mail is addressed to businesses, accountants and “Treasury” managers. It instructs them to download information on tax law changes by clicking on a series of links to publications on businesses, estate taxes, excise taxes, exempt organizations and IRAs and other retirement plans. The IRS believes that clicking on a link downloads malware onto the recipient’s computer. Malware is malicious code that can take over the victim’s computer hard drive, giving someone remote access to the computer, or it could look for passwords and other information and send them to the scamster. There are other types of malware, as well.

The urls contained in the link are not legitimate IRS Web addresses. All IRS.gov Web page addresses begin with http://www.irs.gov/.

Paper Check Phone Call

In a current telephone scam, a caller claims to be an IRS employee who is calling because the IRS sent a check to the individual being called. The caller states that because the check has not been cashed, the IRS wants to verify the individual’s bank account number. The caller may have a foreign accent.

In reality, the IRS leaves it entirely up to the individual to choose to cash or not cash a paper check. The IRS has no business need to know, and does not ask for, bank account or similar information, except when taxpayers indicate on their tax return that they are opting for the direct electronic deposit of their refund. In that case, however, it is the individual’s responsibility to provide the IRS with the correct bank routing and account numbers on the tax return; the IRS does not contact taxpayers to verify the information.

What to Do

Anyone wishing to access the IRS Web site should initiate contact by typing the IRS.gov address into their Internet address window, rather than clicking on a link in an e-mail or opening an attachment.

Those who have received a questionable e-mail claiming to come from the IRS may forward it to a mailbox the IRS has established to receive such e-mails, [email protected], using instructions contained in an article titled “How to Protect Yourself from Suspicious E-Mails or Phishing Schemes.” Following the instructions will help the IRS track the suspicious e-mail to its origins and shut down the scam. Find the article by visiting IRS.gov and entering the words “suspicious e-mails” into the search box in the upper right corner of the front page.

Those who have received a questionable telephone call that claims to come from the IRS may also use the [email protected] mailbox to notify the IRS of the scam.

The IRS has issued previous warnings on scams that use the IRS to lure victims into believing the scam is legitimate. More information on identity theft, phishing and telephone scams using the IRS name, logo or spoofed (copied) Web site is available on this Web site. Enter the terms “phishing,” “identity theft” or “e-mail scams” into the search box in the upper right corner of the front page.

Financial Companies Underestimate ID Fraud

LONDON (Reuters) – Financial services companies must change their attitude to security to curb the rise in identity fraud, the Financial Services Authority says.

The FSA issued the warning following a review of data security systems and controls at 39 firms including banks, building societies, insurance companies and financial advisers.

Although it found examples of good practice across the industry, it said firms underestimated the risk of data loss and fraud to their businesses — especially to their customers.

One company has been referred to the FSA’s enforcement division.

The call comes just days after Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said companies and government departments had suffered an “inexcusable number” of security breaches since the loss of millions of personal details last year.

Thomas said he had been told of 94 data breaches since November, with two-thirds from the public sector and the rest from the private sector. Half of the commercial breaches were from financial institutions.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered an urgent review after HM Revenue and Customs said it had lost data on 25 million people, exposing them to the risk of identity theft and fraud.

The FSA said that, on occasions of significant data loss, firms seemed more concerned about adverse media coverage than on being open and transparent with their customers.

Speaking at the body’s annual conference on financial crime, Philip Robinson, its director of financial crime and intelligence, said: “It is worrying that, despite increased public awareness of the impact that identity theft can have on customers, many firms are still not taking this risk seriously.

“Customers have a right to be confident that firms are doing everything reasonably possible to keep their personal and financial details safe.”