Identity Theft - Is it still relavant?

Identity Theft used to be a big subject.  It's really no big deal until it hits you or someone you know.  Personally i've had one of my credit cards used for online purchases for a few hundred dollars.  It was pretty easy to take care of but was wasted time anyways.  I had to call the credit card company and advise them of the infraction. They cancelled my card and sent me a new one.  Then I had to go online and print out some forms, fill them out testifying that I did not make the purchases.  I mailed them in and waited.  All the while these charges were still on my card.  By the time they investigated it and wiped it off I did have to pay a little interest on that 300 but just getting rid of it was more than worth paying a little interest.  How do you prevent identity theft?  Even the most careful person could be subject to it.  You can take every precaution.  Probobly the best you can take is to never give your information but if your all like me, the allure of shopping online instead of going to a store is too great.  I'd rather run the risk and put my credit card info on the web than have to drive 45 minutes to a store to get the same thing that I can get without starting the car.  But on the same note we all go to doctors, we all have health and car insurance, we all have memberships all over the place.  Think about how many of those little barcode keychain things you could have if you kept them all.  You give your information everytime you get the Tops or Wegmans bonus card, the Best Buy Club card. Everytime you sign up for online banking or on Verizon to check your phone minutes online your giving some of your information.  You are trusting all of these people to protect it. 

I work at BlueCross BlueShield and a couple years ago we had a big incident with identity theft or at least the possibility of one.  We have alot of people who have laptops as they are constantly on the go and taking their work home alot.  One of these laptops became missing after an employee left the company.  It was the companies job to find out what that person had downloaded to his computer on the hard drive in the course of his working there and to see if he had any potentially important information.  To me, I thought it was pretty cool that a company can have the intelligence to be able to trace somebodys movements on the work servers to see what he did in fact have on that laptop.  So all of you going to school think about that before you do somthing not to smart at work thinking no one will ever know, your ther to work, not play.  Back to the story.  Once the company found who's information was on that computer, it was their responsibility to notify everyone that there was a possiblity their identities were in someones hands.  This was just a potential privacy breech but it turned out to be big.  We offered credit protection at the cost of the company and it seemed liked everyone called in to get that protection.  Our customer service department was buzzing for weeks taking calls and conferencing in the agency to get people set up with their credit protection.  But to these people, they were angry that the people they trusted did not have measures in place to make sure that this could not even happen.  The laptop was never found but there was also never an incident of anyone being comprimised which is good.  What did the company learn from this?  To give laptops to fewer people so they can be tracked better.  To allow no data to be put on hard drives but instead have people working from home connect to the network remotely through a VPN.  And most importantly to encrypt all data on these laptops and add extra security measure just to log onto the laptop.  I think it was an eye opener for the company but they handled it really great.  They accepted responsibility, did everything within their power to protect people who may be harmed and put in the measures to try and ensure that it will not happen again.

Click on the Identity Bandit to see an article about this incident.

BCBS Laptop Breach

So I guess yes, maybe Identity theft is still relevant.  You just have to be involved in it to make it more relevant to you.  Maybe we need some more creative identity theft commercials.  Check these out and reminisce. These were funny, and they actually made you listen to what they were saying and learn a little about identity theft, how could you not listen to these!!!