Identity theft

Identity theft

According to many articles and radio programs that cover the subject of identity theft, this trend is on the rise. The following NPR broadcasts covering this subject, show the evident thing which is that it will cost us all a lot of money each year, this activity will be going on in such volume.
The program News & Notes with Ed Gordon, in a two-part broadcast, has Farai Chideya discussing with with Mario Armstrong, the implications of identity theft and what you can do after you discovered you’ve been a victim.
As discussed by Evan Hendricks on the Morning Edition program, there is a difference between credit card fraud and identity theft, and due to precautions taken on the part of credit card companies, credit card fraud is on the decline. However, identity theft is rising.
During a broadcast on Day to Day, Mike Peska examines how big of an industry theft identity really is, and according to the FTS more than fifty three billion dollars in cash and merchandise in 2004 were lost as a result of identity theft.
As Paul Ford reports in All Things Considered, in many instances the culprit may be just a regular person working within the financial arena, or in the customer service departments, and not some brainy hacker that is evil and out to get you, which seems to make identity theft even easier to carry out.
MasterCard International reported that as many as forty million credit card accounts may have been exposed to a computer hacking incident as reported by Alex Chadwick who talked to Evan Hendricks in a Day to Day broadcast in June 2005.
In the March 12, 2005 edition of the broadcast All Things Considered, Jolayne Houtz, a Seattle Times reporter, explains how at an even grater risk for identity theft seem to be children and even infants. They are targets for thieves due to the long time it can take until the victims can find out about the fraudulent activity, when they are older and trying to get a loan for example.
One example used in the broadcast, is a Seattle father who experienced his three week old infant’s identity being stolen, occurrence which the father used to push for legislation that would be tougher for this type of crime, efforts that were paid off with the passing of such legislation by the state of Washington.
As it can be seen from the above examples identity theft can affect anyone and whether it is done by a smart hacker or the people who work in places where they have access to our personal information, this practice is a growing problem in the U.S.

Response

As a person who was affected by credit card fraud, which in fact is a type of identity theft in the sense that, a person took on my identity and charged items using my credit card, I know somewhat about what’s involved in trying to clear up your record.
Listening to NPR’s News & Notes with Ed Gordon I heard Farai Chidea mentioning a web site named ZabaSearch that contains different information on people. I went to that web site and put in my name to see if it will come up without choosing a state, I was amazed at the amount of information I could see about myself including all previous addresses, satellite map locations for all previous and current address, current and former telephone numbers, approximate age, and for a fee I could even buy a background check which included criminal record if that option was chosen. Of course by searching for my name my husband’s name also came up and one can see that we are from the same household due to the same addresses and phone numbers at the same periods of time. I didn’t even know that this site existed, and there are probably many others like it.
Therefore, even if I wasn’t doing any banking transactions on-line a lot of my information could be seen by anybody who knew how to look for it.
It is scary to know that more and more of our personal information is so vulnerable.
I have had experiences where I paid my bill over the phone and the person who took my credit card payment didn’t even say what their name was, and so I had to make a point in asking their name and badge number. Next time I asked for a supervisor to bring it to their attention that if they don’t have an automated system for making payments, they should at least train their employees to say their name when they talk to a customer; after all they have all my personal information in front of them and I don’t even know who I’m talking to.

I suppose in a society where borrowing is all done using the credit factor, it is inevitable not to have the kind of problems we face today, like credit card fraud and identity theft. In Romania, the country where I was born and grew up, there is no such thing as credit reporting agencies. First, most of the things are bought only when you have enough cash to buy them, or if you want to borrow from the bank you have to guarantee for that loan with another type of possession like an apartment, a house, a car, or something else that is evaluated to have at least the same worth as the value of the loan. In this way it is of course harder to get loans, but at the same time you can sleep better at night and not have to worry about your identity being stolen.

In conclusion, I think we all (consumers, credit card companies, on-line companies, etc.) need to do as much as we can to control the spread of this epidemic. Whatever means are within our reach we should exhaust them to better protect our identities on-line as well as in the real world.

WORKS CITED

All Things Considered. ID Thieves Target Children, Infants. National Public Radio.

12 March 2005.

All Things Considered. Stealing Identities, and Ideas. National Public Radio.

14 July 2005.

Day to Day. Credit Info for 40 million Cardholders Stolen. National Public Radio.

20 June 2005.

Day to Day. Identification Theft: The Growing Scam Industry. National Public

Radio. 15 July 2005.

Morning Edition. Identity Theft vs. Credit Card Fraud. National Public Radio.

18 July 2005.

News & Notes with Ed Gordon. Guarding Your Money and Identity: Part One.

National Public Radio. 16 Aug. 2005.

News & Notes with Ed Gordon. Guarding Your Money and Identity: Part Two.

National Public Radio. 17 Aug. 2005.