IP: Identity Theft -- a personal experience

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>From:
>To: dave@farber.net
>Subject: Identity Theft
>
>PLEASE DO NOT IDENTIFY ME IF YOU SEND THIS...
>
>Dave
>
>The following happened to a colleague. About a year
>ago he signed up for a membership at a video rental
>store.  The form had a place for social security
>number and he made the mistake of filling it in.  About
>three months later there was a message on his answerer
>from a bank with which he did not have an account
>asking about an overdraft. Upon calling he discovered
>that there was an account in his name with his ss
>number but with a different address. On calling and
>writing to the various credit bureaus, he discovered
>that there had been numerous queries about his
>creditworthiness. He then contacted each of these and
>discovered that there had been many credit cards
>issued in his name as well as a variety of wireless
>phone accounts. He called each of these in turn and
>got letters from the credit bureaus but could not be
>sure that the matter had ended.
>
>The accounts/credit cards were in states other than
>his but police in those communities were not responsive
>to complaints.  Fortunately, a friend worked in a state
>attorney general office and he made a call to a local
>official in the area where the perpetrators seemed to be
>based.  In addition, quite by accident a local house was
>raided for drugs.  Fortunately, one of the police in the
>raid remembered my colleague's name so when they discovered
>a collection of driver's licenses from a variety of states,
>as well as credit cards and other account info, in my
>colleague's name, he was able to put it all together.
>There were also cards and licenses for others.
>The perpetrators pled and got some jail time...  probably
>more because of the drugs than the identity thefts and fraud.
>
>All of this involved an incredible number of hours and
>associated aggravation to track down and fix the problem.
>And resolving it quickly depended on having a well placed
>connection and a good deal of luck.
>
>The lesson is that we are all vulnerable. Just a ss number
>is enough to get a fraud going.  AND There is no privacy
>wrt ss numbers. For example, at many universities the ss
>number is the same as the student ID...and appears on
>class rosters sent to departments and faculty.



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