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How Safe is Your Identity
BY STACY NUTTER
It wasn’t until 1997 that credit cards
could be “securely” used online. Ten years
later, data breaches and identity thefts
are exploding in volume. How important
is control of data Pretty important. Data
leads to information, information leads
to knowledge and knowledge is power.
Power leads to cash and cash is king! You
would have thought, given its importance,
more attention would have been
paid to preserving this asset over the
past 10 years. Apparently, that’s not the
case and identity theft is now the fastest
growing crime in America.
Probably the most common form of
identity theft is financial. Someone uses
your name and social security number
to obtain new credit to purchase cell
phones, rent apartments, set up corporations
and/or open new credit cards in
your name – any one of which can destroy
a good credit rating in an instant.
Everything you have worked your entire
life to build is suddenly gone. You find
yourself paralyzed by the daunting task
in front of you – closing accounts you
didn’t open, repairing your credit report
and reclaiming your identity.
Consider these facts.
• Identity theft takes place every 3.1
seconds in the U.S. That’s 20 victims every
minute. Last year alone there were 10 million
victims of Identity Theft. In the first
quarter of 2008, there were more than 8.3
million identity breaches. People are annoyed
and understandably anxious over the
loss or theft of their personal information
and feel that they have no control over it.
• It can take approximately 300
hours and $1500-$8000 to clean up the
mess that identity theft leaves behind.
• A good identity thief will get your
information and hold it for at least a year
before using or selling it.
• Employers are responsible for the
security of their employees’ and their customers’
personal information. If there is a
breach of any kind, employers are required
to report it to the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) and send out letters to everyone
affected. If an employee’s identity is
stolen as a result of the breach, they can
use company time (avg. 300 hours) to remediate
their credit and cure the breach.
This process cuts down on productivity
and employees lose confidence in their
employer’s ability to maintain secure files.
• Statistics show that once a company
has had a breach that could result in
identity theft, nearly 1/3 of consumers or
employees will terminate their relationship
with the company.
• Children are vulnerable because
they do not use their social security
numbers to obtain credit until they are
18 years of age. By this time, an identity
thief could have been utilizing their
identity for years.
• Identity theft costs everyone money.
Last year TJMaxx paid out over $60
million to VISA and MasterCard for a
breach in the security of their customers.
• The IRS now has problems securing
the information on your filed return.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration stated that “a hacker
could gain full control because of inadequate
security controls” according to a
recent report. “A disgruntled employee,
contractor or hacker could reconfigure
routers and switches to disrupt computer
operations and steal taxpayer information
in a number of ways, including diverting
the information to unauthorized
systems” the report says. This report was
printed in the first quarter of 2008!
• Some retailers have decided that
it is cheaper to pay the penalties rather
than update the security of their credit
card transaction systems. Unfortunately,
that isn’t true. Remember the TJ Maxx
incident This lax attitude should scare
each and every one of us!
• Identity thieves can access and use
your medical benefits and you may not
know it for years. This is particularly dangerous
because the “health information” of
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