Identity Theft

National Protect Your Identity Week is almost over, but identity theft will continue. According to the 2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report by Javelin Strategy and Research, over 8 million people were victims of identity theft in 2010.

Nowadays the concern revolves around online identity theft, but let’s not lose sight of all the personal information on paper documents that others can easily obtain through other means, like dumpster diving.

So if you haven’t invested in a good paper shredder, now’s the time. According to Noreen Perrotta, Finance Editor of Consumer Reports:

“One of the best ways to help protect your privacy is to make sure you shred important documents before you toss them…Cross-cut shredders are very effective at doing that because they slice papers horizontally and vertically.”

The GoECOlife GXC120Ti 12-Sheet Cross-Cut Green Commercial Shredder, for example, would be good for both the home and small office.

Not sure what to shred or what to toss? Here are a few tips on deciding. For documents that you need to keep like birth certificates or social security cards, consider getting a safe.

Don’t become a victim of identity theft. Check out our entire selection of paper shredders to start protecting your identity today.

Paper Shredders

Here’s a selection from “Duluth Police Thwart Major Identity Theft Operation” by Faye Edmundson with the Norcross Patch”

The financial documents were located throughout the house “from the bottom floor to the third floor,” Foster said. A fraudulent income tax refund check Ford had apparently just received was lying on the kitchen table, the detective said. “We found fraudulent income tax returns, as well.” In addition, $172,000 in cash was found in a safe at the home, Foster reported.

Ford was not at home, but turned herself in to Duluth Police that evening, Foster said. A counterfeit check drawn on the account of a Duluth attorney was found in Ford’s back pocket when she was arrested, the detective said.

The Duluth Police Department had been asked by the Social Security Administration to track two checks that had been deposited in Duluth, Foster said. The investigation revealed “a large number of Social Security and income tax refund checks had been run through the account,” she said. Ford, the owner of ePro Tax Service, Foster said, had been filing fraudulent income tax returns and depositing the tax refund checks. ePro Tax Service was not a legitimate company, she said.

The investigation so far has uncovered 5,779 identity fraud victims, and there are more, Foster said. “We are not close to being finished.”

Paper Shredders

Safes

The report’s author, Richard Power, Distinguished Fellow, Director of Strategic Communications at Carnegie Mellon, agreed this was not a rigorous academic study but defended the report’s finding by saying “it won’t matter what the numbers are if it happens to you.” He added that stolen identities from children might be the hottest ticket in the identity underground today. For example, included within the report are first-person accounts of an eight-year-old whose credit history included in a foreclosure on a home, a three-year-old in collection for unpaid utility bills, and a five-year-old whose SSN was used for a hunting license in another state. The youngest victim was three months old. The highest losses were attributed to a 16 year old who found nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in fraud losses pegged to the misuse of her SSN.

Whether you’re concerned about the handling of your own sensitive information or your child’s, it’s certain that proper disposal of private information is necessary at any age. Parents must take the responsibility for maintaining their child’s credit and identity while they are a minor. Shredding social security numbers and other credit information are a must, along with securely storing documents that must be saved.

Safes

Paper Shredders

Here’s a selection from “Nevada official says ‘wanted’ listing error result of identity theft” from the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah:

The mistaken listing of a former Logan man as one of Nevada’s “10 Most Wanted” fugitives was the result of identity theft, a Nevada police official said Thursday.

The story of Jay Patrick’s erroneous listing as a wanted criminal and subsequent incarceration at the Cache County Jail made statewide news in Utah this week, including front-page articles in The Herald Journal and The Salt Lake Tribune.

Patrick, a former Herald Journal reporter now living in Boise, was arrested as a Nevada drug-trafficking suspect when he returned to Logan on March 30 to pay a fine for fishing without a license. After three days in jail, he was able to secure his release by proving he was at work in Logan on days when a drug informant purchased large quantities of methamphetamine from a dealer in Mesquite, Nev., going under the name Jason Patrick.

We’ve covered countless methods of identity theft, ways to prevent it, and stories of just how terrible the consequences can be. From social networking sites to tax refunds, criminals won’t stop finding new ways to commit fraud. If you haven’t given much thought to how secure your identity is, there are some simple places to start. Regularly changing your passwords using both capital and lower case letters as well as numbers, shredding unneeded documents containing sensitive information, and securing documents that need to be kept all will help keep your identity out of the reach of thieves.

Safes

Cross-Cut Paper Shredders

From “How your Facebook profile can lead to identity theft” from Action News 5 in Cincinnati:

Your social security number isn’t completely random. The first three numbers are determined by where you were born. So if you list your hometown on Facebook, most identity thieves already have a head start.

The second group of numbers is called a group number, and it is based on when and where your parents applied for your security number.

The third set of numbers is typically some kind of sequential pattern. Because those are not random, it’s something that a computer would easily guess.

Do you have your hometown and birth date on your profile? Most likely the answer is yes, so at the very least you should change your privacy settings to block all information from anyone that is not your friend.

Also, think of the security questions and answers that you have for your secured accounts. What’s your favorite color? Who was your favorite teacher? What street did you grow up on? Most people don’t think twice before sharing any of these, and having most of your social security number along with the answers to those questions can go a long way.

From “How to Spot and Prevent Tax Identity Theft“ by Elisabeth Leamy with ABC News:

Steps to Prevent Tax Identity Theft

Don’t respond to emails with IRS in the “from” field. There’s a current scam in which fraudsters pose as the Internal Revenue Service and email people, claiming your electronic tax return did not go through. They ask you to refile it and direct you to a fraudulent site where they harvest your personal financial information. Know this: The IRS will nevercommunicate with you through email. Any email claiming to be from the IRS is a scam.

Check out your tax preparer. One way identity thieves tap into your tax information is by providing fake tax preparation services. These services may be advertised on Internet listing services or telephone poles, and the hook is that they are free. Don’t fall for it.

From “Scam artists tamper with ATM machines & commit identity theft: Don’t fall prey” by KC Kelly with the West Palm Beach Headlines Examiner:

This information was gathered by ATM technicians who repair these machines throughout Palm Beach County. The workers discovered that the scam artists have been cutting the bottom of the ATM card readers to remove the microchip. They then insert their own battery-operated card reader to skim customers’ account information.

How to protect yourself from this? Police say to look out for ATM machines that are not dispensing money. If you run into a malfunctioning ATM machine, odds are it has been tampered with by crooks.

Although these are some great tips for these new methods used by identity thieves, the need to secure or destroy your sensitive information is higher than it’s ever been. Storing needed documents in a safe location or shredding unneeded materials is still a necessity.

Safes

Cross-Cut Paper Shredders

There are few specifics, but here are the parts of the standard that deal with proper handling of unneeded consumer data:

From “Navigating PCI DSS“, a document released by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council:

9.10 Destroy media when it is no longer needed for business or legal reasons as follows:

9.10.1 Shred, incinerate, or pulp hardcopy materials so that cardholder data cannot be reconstructed

9.10.2 Render cardholder data on electronic media unrecoverable so that cardholder data cannot be reconstructed

In it’s reference for Audit Procedures, the PCI SSC provides more detail on the minimum requirements for such destruction:

• Verify that hard-copy materials are cross-cut shredded, incinerated, or pulped, in accordance with ISO 9564-1 or ISO 11568-3e
• Examine storage containers used for information to be destroyed to verify that the containers are secured.
• Verify that electronic media is destroyed beyond recovery by using a military wipe program to delete files, or via degaussing or otherwise physically destroying the media.

Digital Data Destruction

Cross-Cut Paper Shredders

In an ongoing effort to provide clearly stated and up-to-date information regarding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), today on the Mono Blog we’ll outline the specific civil and criminal penalties that can result from being in violation of the act’s rules and regulations. Over the past few weeks we’ve discussed some specific requirements set forth by this legislation, as well as some stories about the severity of the penalties for failing to follow them. Here are the specifics, from “HIPAA Violations and Enforcement” found on the American Medical Association website:

HIPAA Violation	Minimum Penalty	Maximum Penalty
Individual did not know (and by exercising reasonable diligence would not have known) that he/she violated HIPAA	$100 per violation, with an annual maximum of $25,000 for repeat violations (Note: maximum that can be imposed by State Attorneys General regardless of the type of violation)	$50,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $1.5 million
HIPAA violation due to reasonable cause and not due to willful neglect	$1,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $100,000 for repeat violations	$50,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $1.5 million
HIPAA violation due to willful neglect but violation is corrected within the required time period	$10,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $250,000 for repeat violations	$50,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $1.5 million
HIPAA violation is due to willful neglect and is not corrected	$50,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $1.5 million	$50,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $1.5 million

In addition to these severe civil penalties, in cases of gross misconduct in which an individual or entity “knowingly obtains or discloses” protected information criminal penalties also may apply.

Covered entities and specified individuals, as explained below, whom “knowingly” obtain or disclose individually identifiable health information in violation of the Administrative Simplification Regulations face a fine of up to $50,000, as well as imprisonment up to one year. Offenses committed under false pretenses allow penalties to be increased to a $100,000 fine, with up to five years in prison. Finally, offenses committed with the intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain or malicious harm permit fines of $250,000, and imprisonment for up to ten years.

As we mentioned in our recent post, “Enforcement of HIPAA Intensified“, the Department of Health and Human services is actively investigating violations of HIPAA and penalties are being assessed in continually growing numbers. If you or your organization is required to follow HIPAA regulations, failure to properly dispose of customer data, whether on paper or digitally stored, is simply not an option. The civil penalties are not only severe, there is also the potential for lengthy imprisonment.

Paper Shredders

Digital Data Destruction

From “Identity Theft: Your Chances of Being a Victim“, by Tim Chen with U.S. News & World Report:

• Put a security freeze on your credit report. This costs $30 or less, and will make it impossible for anyone to open new accounts in your name because the lenders won’t have access to your report. It can be cumbersome, says Stevens, because you’ll have to lift the freeze every time you want to apply for credit, a job, or rent a home, but it’s the number one way to keep from becoming a victim.

• Review your credit reports. You can get them free at annualcreditreport.com. View one of the three available every four months to make sure that no one is applying for credit in your name.

• Shred all documents that have personal information on them. It’s not uncommon for identity thieves to search through garbage for their information.

• Keep a credit log. Stevens recommends keeping a log that alerts you when all financial mail should be received, such as credit cards and bank accounts, to ensure that you’ll know it’s been intercepted. In addition, your log should include the names, addresses, phone numbers and account information for each of your credit cards, bank accounts and other companies where you have financial dealings.

• Secure your computer. You should never use public WI-FI to transmit personal data, and you should have good security controls on your home computer. Identity thieves often intercept data or hack into computers to steal people’s personal information.

As we continue to educate ourselves to secure our identities the con-artists and thieves continue their education in deceit as well, so the Mono Blog will remain vigilant in providing the most accurate and up-to-date data and prevention tips for consumers like you.

Paper Shredders

Safes

While the family dog might be good at guarding your home, it certainly can’t help to protect the theft of your child’s identity. Yesterday on the Mono Blog we covered the topic of identity theft through gaming consoles, a new trend that targets younger, less informed victims. As adults continue to learn about the threats of ID theft and take measures to prevent it, the thieves are looking for new targets, and it’s now reached even small children. Sadly, the perpetrators of the these crimes against children are very often the child’s own parent, but what can you as a parent do to make sure your own child’s identity does not fall into the wrong hands? Here are a couple examples of typical scenarios, along with some tips for prevention from the Baltimore Police:

From “Baltimore County police offer child identity theft prevention tips“, by Pete Pachaske with the Arbutus Times:

Identity theft might be easy for professionals, but child identity theft can be, well, child’s play.

Here’s how it typically works, say the experts: A parent runs up credit card debt or falls behind in the bills. In desperation, he uses his child’s Social Security number or other personal information to get a credit card. Then, as often as not, the parent proceeds to run up debt in the child’s name as well.

The problem for the child comes years later, when, as an adult, he tries, say, to rent an apartment or get a student loan, and discovers, to his dismay, that he already has bad credit.

Of course, not all child identity theft is perpetrated by a family member. Experts believe that increasingly, professional thieves are targeting children, in part because it can take so long before the crime is discovered and in part because so many people often have access to children’s personal information.

Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Research Center in San Diego, tells the story of an elementary school where cafeteria workers were keeping track of lunches served by using the child’s Social Security number. “Imagine how easy it would be to photocopy that list of numbers,” she says. “It’s an incident waiting to happen because of an opportunity.”

TIPS
• Give out your child’s Social Security number sparingly — as sparingly as you would your own. Schools, doctors, clinics, even sports teams might ask for it, but in many cases, they do not need it.

• Caution your child from an early age not to give out her Social Security number. In fact, hold onto your child’s cards yourself. And don’t carry them around with you; keep them in a safe place.

• If your child receives unsolicited offers for credit cards or, worse yet, is contacted by a debt collection agency, ask for a credit report on her. If there is one, file a police report and, if needed, work to clean up any problems.

• Shortly before your teenaged child is likely to need credit as a young adult, ask for a credit report on her. If there isn’t one, that’s great news; if there is one, file a police report.

While you may want to scrapbook every memory from you child’s early years, it’s more important than ever that sensitive information such as Social Security Numbers need to be stored in a secure location, and shredded when no longer needed.

Safes

Personal Shredders