Are you one of the 9 million Americans who will have their credit damaged or their bank account emptied this year? Or perhaps your medical treatment will be affected. The cost of identity theft to individuals and businesses is staggering; hence, the Red Flag Rule, enforced by the FTC, federal bank regulatory agencies and the National Credit Union Administration.
There are always “red flags” that pop into our heads but too often we ignore them. Call it “intuition” or whatever you want; the vital thing is to pay attention. To that end, many businesses and organizations are now required to implement the “Red Flags” Rule to implement a written Identity Theft Prevention Program. The goal is to detect warning signs in day-to-day operations, take steps to prevent the crime and limit any damage.
Only in California! A Huntington Beach woman used another woman’s identity to pay for breast implants and liposuction. At first glance, it’s a laughable story. But imagine being the woman who has to prove that she wasn’t the augmentation recipient! Remember, with identity theft, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Medical identity theft will take us to new and embarrassing depths in order to prove that we are innocent. It will give new meaning to the phrase “bearing witness”. And it prompts the question of why we don’t have a set of universal rules that govern our personally identifying information?
On a related note, I recently became involved with the Santa Fe Group which published an excellent white paper informally known as the Identity Theft Bill of Rights. Registering for a download of the paper is well worth your time – it does an excellent job of summarizing the identity theft issues that we, as Americans, face in the coming years. It includes discussions about modifying language in HIPAA to protect against medical identity theft crimes similar to and far more serious than the Huntington Beach case.
As our population grows older on the shoulders of the baby boomers, medical identity theft and its cousins will become ever more prevalent and damaging. Help us fight for our identity rights by getting involved. Start by registering for a webinar put on by the Santa Fe Group called:
For centuries, jurors have been banned from seeking information on a trial from outside of the courtroom. The advent of the iPhone and BlackBerry have made that nearly impossible to enforce. Last week, just such a deliberation-room privacy breach led to a mistrial in a Florida drug trial. How will technology change the way we try crimes in an isolated setting? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
To read more on the case, visit the original New York Times article:
A few weeks ago, Javelin Safety & Research released its comprehensive survey on Identity Theft & Fraud for the fifth consecutive year.
Let me boil it down to the Top 5 Identity Theft Findings that impact you (and my comments and opinions in parentheses):
Overall Identity Fraud Incidents Increased in the United States (the problem is getting worse as the economy sinks and people turn to crime to pay their bills)
Costs to Consumers are Down (businesses are being forced to take greater responsibility for the liabilities and costs of identity theft – in other words, the burden is shifting from the consumer to corporate America)
Fraudsters are Moving Much More Quickly (the crime of identity theft is moving from garden variety criminals into the hands of organized crime)
Thank you to all of the Marines at Camp Pendleton and the Airmen at LA AFB for attending my identity theft workshop.
During my speech, I promised to give you easy-to-complete action steps to protect your identity against theft, as well as that of your loved ones. I’d like to deliver on that promise by directing you to a full page article I’ve written specifically for you: John Sileo’s Military Identity Theft Protection Kit. If you have additional suggestions for protecting military IDs that I haven’t covered in this article, please include your comments at the bottom of the post. With your input, this conversation should contribute to the financial stability of our armed forces – which is vital, because, as you are aware, financial readiness is mission readiness.
I am starting to reconsider my opinion that online banking is safer than traditional banking. Primarily because I have been hearing horror stories during some of my identity theft seminars. But now I am seeing it in the mainstream media. Case in point: read this short article in this morning’s USA Today about Hackers Swarming Bank Accounts. I’m open to your opinions, but I feel like the thieves are starting to win. In a YouTube video post I did some time ago about online banking, I suggested that if your computer is well-protected, you are better to bank online.
But lately, it seems like the thieves are a step ahead. What are your thoughts? Have you had any troubles with identity being compromised because of the types of threats discussed in the article?
Identity theft speaker John Sileo on why identity theft is moving into the workplace.
It feels as if there has been a directional shift in the past year regarding the source of data theft. From the stories I hear after every identity theft speech I deliver, the crime of data theft, identity theft and intellectual property theft are becoming more organized and moving much more into the realm of workplace identity theft and corporate data theft (i.e., it’s happening at work even more than out of our homes). The information being stolen is still often times consumer-based, but it is being compromised more often at the business level.
I think one factor contributing to this shift into the working environment has been the decline in the value of identity information. The average social security number or bank account number is worth far less on the black data market than it was even a year ago. This means that in order to make large sums of money, the thieves need to increase volume.
Thanks to everyone who attended my identity theft seminar this morning hosted by the Department of Defense at Andrews Air Force Base. For the list of identity theft prevention tips I referred to during the speech, please proceed to the bottom of this post. But before you do that… During the workshop, an audience member asked me a simple question:
Do Loyalty Cards (like the ones you sign up for in the supermarket to get store discounts) make me nervous?
They don’t, but that is because I take precautions to protect my privacy. Here’s how loyalty cards work:
At the Privacy Project, our success is your nightmare (unless you are my speaking agent).
Business at the Sileo Group and engagements as an identity theft speaker are up 400% compared with the same period last year. I am booked for exactly 4X as many identity theft prevention and privacy leadership speeches in the first quarter of 2009 as I was in 2008; and 2008 brought me more work than I could handle on my own. Some of this is due to an extensive contract with the Department of Defense, but not all of it.
I’m not sharing our success to blow my own horn, though admittedly, it is satisfying to finally share some good news with you after having lost so much to this crime.
I’m sharing because our success gave me cold sweats at 3am this morning.
Why? Because the strength of my business is inversely proportional to the safety of yours. My business is thriving because identity theft is thriving, and that is not my purpose for being in business. I am in the identity theft prevention business to put myself out of a job. When I say it keeps me awake at night, I’m being sincere. At 3am this morning, I spent several hours deciphering the underlying causes responsible for the exploding demand for identity theft speakers… even as the meetings and speaking business has suffered drastically at the hands of the spiraling economy. And then it came to me; I realized that the answer was contained in the question…
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At the Privacy Project, our success is your nightmare (unless you are my speaking agent).
