2005 June 17 | Wheatworks Blog: Financial Matters

Archive for 17th June 2005

Your Identity Will Probably Be Stolen

6/17/2005, 6:18 pm

According to the Population Clock on the US Census Bureau’s web site, the US population stands at 296,390,127 on June 17, 2005.

A quick search of the news sites, MSNBC and CNN, yields the following numbers of individuals whose personal information has been stolen:

02/2003 - 8 million credit card account numbers stolen from Data Processors International
02/2005 - 30,000 US citizens have their names, social security number, credit reports stolen from ChoicPoint Inc.
03/2005 - 1.2 million federal employees’ social security numbers and account information is lost by Bank of America Corp.
03/2005 - 32,000 US citizens have their personal information access by intruders in databases of LexisNexis.
03/2005 - personal data of 600,000 current and former Time Warner Inc. employees is lost.
04/2005 - up to 200,000 Ameritrade customers’ account information is lost.
06/2005 - 3.9 million consumer lending customers’ personal information lost by UPS in transit to a credit bureau.
06/2005 - 40 million credit card account numbers stolen from CardSystems Solutions, Inc.

Add the numbers of affected people from these 8 events and you’ll find that 51,562,000 have had their personal information stolen or lost. Assuming no duplication of individuals in these breaches of privacy, that’s an incredible 17.4% of the US population whose personal information has come up missing! Stand with five of your friends and the odds are that one of you has been, is or will be a victim of identify theft based on only these 8 breaches listed above.

Prepare yourself for it. As time passes while Congress and Corporations refuse to act proactively about Identity Theft, the chance of becoming a victim will only increase.

Learn what to do before you have to respond to the theft of your identify. One excellent resources are the Federal Trade Commission’s ID Theft site at http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/index.html. Another great source of information is the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse web site at: http://www.privacyrights.org/identity.htm.

On December 1, 2004, thanks to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 [aka FACTA]), the major credit reporting agencies were required to provide consumers a free credit report once each 12 months. If you will take advantage of this provision of the Federal FACT Act, you’ll be able to stay on top of the information maintained by the credit reporting agencies. You can receive all three reports at the same time once a year or space them out so that every 4 months you get a free credit report. The major credit reporting agencies created AnnualCreditReport.com to make it easy for your to access your free credit reports as provided by the FACTA laws.

Face it, at some point in your life, your identity will be stolen. Corporate America is not going to work on your behalf. You have to protect yourself. Learn what to do before it happens and monitor your credit reports.

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