Military personnel have unique and pressing reasons to pay extra attention to protecting themselves from military identity theft, as well as guarding the private data of their loved ones. For example:
Historically, the armed forces have used pieces of identity (including Social Security Numbers) to openly identify personal items, including: dog tags, military IDs, commission papers, pay checks and duffel bags. While this practice is being fazed out, it still increases the risk of identity theft among military personnel.
If a member of the military has their identity stolen while deployed (especially overseas), it is exceptionally difficult to recover from the crime in a timely and effective manner. Can you imagine trying to repair your credit rating from the streets of Iraq or prove your innocence to a collection agency while crouched in the bunkers of Afghanistan? To add insult to injury, returning from a tour to find that your credit has been destroyed and that you are wanted for crimes you didn’t commit can be overwhelming.
Our airmen, soldiers, sailors and marines can be called to duty in an instant. If financially unprepared, this leaves their families vulnerable to attack. It is imperative that we proactively protect not only ourselves, but our loved ones as well.
Protecting the privacy of our military is a national security concern. In the age of cyber-attacks and digital warfare, we cannot leave our fighting and peace-keeping personnel open to attack.
Because of these additional risks, it is imperative for our military personnel to implement the steps below to prevent military identity theft.
Think about it…slowly, over time, we have given away our privacy. Many times we don’t even realize we are giving it away. We commonly trade our personal information for access to website content (free songs, email), the chance to win a contest (iPods, vacations) or a one-time 10% discount at a clothing retailer. I call this slow and unnecessary leakage of our personal information identity creep. Our information is requested in a subtle way, and because the immediate benefits seem substantial and often feel harmless, we overlook the downside—that we are gradually broadcasting our identity to those who shouldn’t have it.
One source at a time, we must reverse our bad habits and guard information rather than give it out. Understandably, we cannot entirely give up sharing our information. But we must determine what to share and with whom. We must begin to accumulate our privacy over time. This incremental approach keeps prevention from being an overwhelming task and reminds you to consider the risk anytime identity is involved.
Someone asked a wonderful question of me the other day: “why don’t the police arrest people who steal your identity?”. It is a question I’ve never been asked before (which is odd, now that I think about it), but I’ve spend much time researching and pondering.
It comes down to three factors:
Lack of Resources. When my identity was stolen the first time (a woman used it to buy a second home in my name), I reported it to the local police department. Their response was that I was number 6532 on this list of fraud complaints and that they would never get around to looking into the case. I knew the woman’s name, address and phone number, but law enforcement didn’t have the resources to investigate or prosecute the crime. And I didn’t have the resources to go after her legally. So it went untouched.
You’ve probably seen in the news that a hacker gained access into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo.com email account. The hacker used a simple scheme and basic social engineering tools (research on Google and Wikipedia, common-sense guessing) to reset the password on the account and assume ownership of her email. [For a full account of how a professor, Herbert H. Thompson, used these tools to steal a friends identity (with their permission), visit his recent and extremely interesting article, How I Stole Someone’s Identity and the companion radio interview.]
In addition to denying Governor Palin access to her own account, the hacker had full control to:
Read every saved and current email in her account (hopefully she never sent her Social Security Number, passwords or account numbers via email, not to mention correspondence pertaining to her role as candidate for Vice President of the U.S.)
Steal the email addresses and any other sensitive information stored in her contacts (John McCain might want to change his email address)
Send out emails as if the hacker were Sarah Palin, or worse yet, send out official emails as Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin
The potential for abuse is mind boggling. Sarah Palin should take immediate steps to protect her stolen identity and to secure her future privacy. Here are a sampling of the steps I would recommend:
Are you one of the 200,000,000+ Americans (almost 66% of the US population) who had their identity stolen from TJ Maxx, Marshalls, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 or DSW?
If so, you need to know that 11 people, including a Secret Service informant,
Some readers might not know that I was a two-time victim of identity theft for losses of more than $300,000. That is the reason I wrote Stolen Lives and that I am now a professional identity theft speaker. I don’t promote my services any more than necessary on my blog (I leave that to my commercial website which deals with my profession as an identity theft speaker and expert). Quite often, however, I have blog readers requesting to see a preview video of my speaking. To satisfy that request, I’ll post a copy of my identity theft speaker preview video below. By the way, I learned the value of linking my YouTube videos, my blog and my website from an amazing SEO guy named Steve Mertz. Check out his SEO advice.
I just finished giving an identity theft prevention and data privacy speech for Pfizer and one of the questions I received was how to protect your laptop, passports, client files, etc. when you leave them behind in your hotel room. I’ve blogged on this before, but thought that I would post a quick video reminder on protecting your identity in a hotel room. We are at such a greater risk of identity theft when we are traveling that it is worth taking a second look at your habits.
For more tips of this type, please visit my YouTube Identity Theft Expert Video Channel at www.YouTube.com/JohnSileo. It is relatively new, but my office is working diligently to add content every week. Some people like to read, some like to watch, so I will continue to add blogs of both types. Travel wisely this summer.
Since the publication of my identity theft prevention book, Stolen Lives – Identity Theft Prevention Made Simple, several resource links listed in the book have changed. Since the book is not a dynamic document, but this blog is, I’d like to provide updated links here. If you find other links in Stolen Lives that have become outdated since publication, please use the Contact form above to let me know. If you have good sources of identity theft prevention, please include them with a response below. Click through for the update links that I know about so far…
In the world of professional speaking, you are expected to be an expert in your topic (to be taken seriously and to make a living). So speakers begin calling themselves experts, sometimes before they deserve the title. It’s like giving yourself a nickname – it feels a bit self-congratulatory.
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You’ve probably seen in the news that a hacker gained access into 
Since the publication of my identity theft prevention book, 
