ID Theft Happens More in the Offline World
The 2005 Identity Fraud Survey Report, a report co-conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research and the Better Business Bureau, discovered that while identity theft is on the rise, most of these crimes happen offline. In fact, out of 9.3 million Americans who were victims of ID theft, less than 12 percent of those crimes took place online. I found this surprising because of all the news we hear these days about e-mail scams, spyware, online banking, etc.
Other interesting facts taken from the study are:
- More than half of these victims actually know the people who actually stole from them: family members, friends, and neighbors. This could be from the paper you have lying on your desk or have thrown away in the trash.
- About 28 percent of ID theft crimes start with finding someone else’s purse or wallet
- On average, victims of ID theft who monitored their accounts online had lower fraud amounts to contend with ($551), compared to victims who monitored their accounts via paper statements ($4,543). What this means is that you can spot discrepancies a lot sooner if you’re monitoring things online rather than waiting for the paper statements to arrive in the mail.
So what can we glean from this report?
- Shred your paper statements or at the very least keep them secure. This will make it much less likely to have your roommate’s or family member’s eyeballs going over them.
- Try to rely on your memory to keep those password and account numbers with you. Don’t make it easy for curious eyes to find that information.
- Consider paying your bills online, but only after you’ve confirmed you’re giving your money to the appropriate company.
- Instead of leaving your mail in your personal mailbox, try finding the nearest post office and depositing your mail there.
- I can’t say it too often: protect your computer with software utilities designed to fight against viruses, and install a firewall.
- Don’t be fooled by e-mails from companies you may have done business with asking you to provide your logini information. If you’re in doubt, contact the company and ask them to verify they sent the e-mail.
- I don’t want to make anyone paranoid, but keep an eye on your family members, neighbors, friends when your account or financial information is concerned. Remember, more than half the victims in the study knew the people who stole from them.
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Great points, I’m constantly reminding people you are very likely to be compromised off the internet. I work for EarthLink (a large ISP) in the product group, we are responsible for creating the “protection products“. You can find some other interesting statistics in a report we release every few months called the SpyAudit Report. In the last report, we saw that Spyware “instances of system monitors rose 230 percent, while the instances of Trojans rose 114 percent from October 2004 to December 2004.” If your wanting to know more about internet threats in general tune in to our Protection Blog where our team of gurus are contributing posts related to their expertise.
thanks,
-mike
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