An estimated 3.6 million households, or about 3 percent of all households in the nation, learned that they had been the victims of at least one type of identity theft during a six-month period in 2004, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Forty-eight percent had experienced unauthorized use of credit cards; 25 percent had other accounts, such as banking accounts, used without permission; 15 percent experienced the misuse of personal information and 12 percent experienced multiple types of theft at the same time, according to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
About one-third of households that were identity theft victims discovered the loss by noticing missing money or unfamiliar charges on an account, and about a one-quarter were contacted by a credit bureau. The estimated loss during the six-month period was about $3.2 billion. This included losses that may have been reimbursed by credit card companies, insurance companies or other financial institutions.
About two-thirds of the households said they lost money. The average loss was $1,290. Some households for which misuse was still ongoing at the time of the interview may have continued to suffer losses.
The saddest statistic is that — regardless of “remedies” offered by credit bureaus and the law — at least 25% of these families continue to suffer abuse from the original theft.
Check with your credit card company. Some credit card companies are issuing ‘single use’ credit card numbers, which you use once and then are no longer valid. This is a valuable resource if you have to deal with an online company that you don’t necessarily trust or you only have to deal with them only once.
And as you probably know by now, using your debit card for ‘regular’ payments is not that great an idea. Aside from the fact that you don’t realize how much money you are spending since it is not ‘real’ like cash, it turns out that some companies are recording your PIN when you enter it at those mini-terminals. Use cash whenever possible.
Request a new credit card number once a year, and update your auto-payments.
If you have a credit card that you hardly ever use, ask the credit card company if you can put a limit on the transaction size or daily use, so that secondary confirmation is required for use beyond that limit. You are not limiting your total credit, just how much can be spent at a time without additional confirmation.
Technology is the end of humanity. Technology is ten steps ahead of ethics and morality. We’re getting to a point where war, crime and “evil” is an armchair hobby due to push-button technology.
Regularly I get scam phishing attempts. I usually try to pass the information along to the scammed institution. I am about to give up. A couple of days ago I was phished twice on the same day by someone impersonating eBay. I went to the eBay site to pass on the information. The email address is buried so deep that it took my about twenty minutes to find it. Then it asked me for my eBay registration number and password. I’M NOT A MEMBER OF eBAY !!! This is not the only time I have had a lot of difficulty passing along a phishing email. The financial institutions just don’t care. As a test, try out your own bank. Try to find their abuse address. Hint, it isn’t always abuse @ bank.conjob.
Technology is only as good as the geniuses or fools behind it.
If the CC companies wanted a secure system(badly enough), they could design one. But it is somehow more profitable for them to maintain the current (flawed) system. Now the question is why?
This is one more reason I hate this do-nothing congress.
Identity theft is a huge problem betting bigger; it’ s been coming for years; it’s fixable; and congress refuses to do anything.
I see three huge problems in our system… all fixable.
1) Our social security number is a de facto national identity number.
2) Credit card numbers have no security built in.
3) Our credit reports and other personal information are owned by whoever collects it, not by us.
C’mon Congress! STOP FUND RAISING FOR A MOMENT and start fixing these problems!
Some states have passed laws which allow citizens to freeze their credit reports. Now I hear the three credit bureaus are lobbying congress for a federal law that would supercede state law and forbid anyone from freezing their credit report until AFTER they become victims of identity theft.
Corporate America at its worst.