Americans are facing an attack on their personal and financial privacy
Keith Londrie II

Defined Tag: Identity Theft Help.

Americans are facing an attack on
their personal and financial privacy unlike that seen by any prior generation.



Shielding your private financial information with no
risk of a breakdown may be impossible these days. But its critical to
understand how your privacy can be compromised and the consequences of such a
breach -- and take a few simple steps to, if nothing else, better the odds in
your favor.

This rather broad term takes in any
number of privacy crimes, including theft of a Social Security number, a credit
or debit card, or even the pilfering of phone calling cards.



The numbers associated with identity theft are
beginning to add up fast. A recent General Accounting Office report estimates
that as many as 750,000 Americans are victims of identity theft every year. And
that number may be low, as many people choose not to report the crime or, for
that matter, even know theyve been victimized.



Officials say much of identity theft still comes down
to hands-on mischief -- things like Dumpster diving, in which criminals sift
through trash to find a credit-card statement or solicitation that someone
didnt tear up, and 'shoulder surfing', where criminals try to spot calling card
and personal identification numbers, and more commonly, mail theft.



Knowing which tricks thieves prefer remains an
unquantifiable mystery. Eighty percent of the victims who call us say they have
no idea how it happened, says Joanna Crane, program manager of the Federal
Trade Commissions Identity Theft Program.



Officials also acknowledge that the Internet has opened
new avenues for theft. If nothing else, the Web allows thieves to send stolen
data to most any worldwide location.

One popular scam involves fake
mortgage brokers who dangle super low rates if the applicant is quick to provide
personal data. Another uses e-mails in which the sender poses as an Internet
service provider asking for information: Even though people are told that ISPs
will never ask for your Social Security number, one scam was just shut down
after 70,000 people responded to their e-mails, notes Crane.



 A skimmer is
about the size of a credit card, says Ellen Moriwaki, a senior product manager
at CyberSource, a payment processing and risk management concern. And a
criminal buys off a waiter in a restaurant. When you give him your credit card,
he rings it up but also runs it through the skimmer, which collects your credit
card information. In exchange for $50 a card, a waiter can gather as many as
100 credit cards a night.



A Social Security card can also reap long-term
fraudulent benefits. Virgil Gardaya, a corporate vice president with the credit
bureau Equifax, notes that a stolen wallet containing a Social Security card
lets a criminal quickly set up dummy bank and savings accounts. The very
presence of the account may prompt the bank to give the criminal a credit card.
From there, the con artist may waste little time maxing out the card, or take a
bit more time and build up the card's buying power. That can mean fraudulent
purchases as pricey as cars and boats.



When I moved five years ago, I was alerted that two new
accounts had been opened up under my name, adds Gardaya. They actually had
statements being delivered to two different addresses.

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