One of the most overlooked under-secured resources that identity thieves have at their disposal is old electronic equipment that victims have discarded or recycled or donated without having properly scrubbed the hard drive of personal and highly sensitive information.  Thieves have bid on old computers on auctioning sites such as eBay and even scoured local garage sales or city dumps looking for the old computer you didn’t properly scrub before discarding.  Don’t make it any easier for identity thieves to make off with your information.  Take some easy steps toward securing that information before you upgrade to a new computer, cell phone, PDA, et cetera.  Use a wiping program to ensure that the data on your hard drive is cleared or, if you know how, replace that information with ones and zeros.  A simple deletion of the information is never good enough if that information is not written on top of with addition and innocuous information.  For the majority of us, however, that kind of computer know how escapes us, so in the case of the average American, a little elbow grease can replace computer know how.  Remove the hard drive and physically destroy it by drilling holes in multiple places.  Use a titanium bit.  Take out and destroy the memory cards from your cell phone before you discard it or simply use that same card in your new and upgraded phone.  Ask the manufacturer of the device for advice on how to properly dispose of your memory card or phone itself.  Finally, make sure you haven’t physically included any pertinent information on the hardware itself.  Check to make sure you have written your password on your computer or any documents you might be recycling with it.  Make sure you haven’t scribbled any important numbers or information on the inside of anything like the case of your phone or tucked anything inside of any piece of hardware you plan on donating, reselling, or throwing away.

Stolen wallets or purses are the leading source of information needed by thieves to steal your identity.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so always keep your wallet purse safe and close and closed and secured.  But if you find your wallet or purse missing, take the steps needed to get yourself back on track.  After calling financial institutions, you should file a police report in regards to your stolen wallet or purse.  You are the victim of a crime, after all, and you will need to have filed a police report as a step towards undoing any damage done by the perpetrator.  You will likely need to answer a series of questions, so be prepared to report information such as when you first noticed that your wallet went missing, where you think it might have been stolen, what else was in your wallet or purse, a description of the wallet or purse and if you have any idea who might have done it.  Once you have filed a police report, then call all three of the major credit reporting companies (Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union) and request that a fraud alert be put on your account.  This alert will force the hand of any creditors by requiring that they take extra steps in verifying your identity before approving any further credit.  There are many ways that the creditors can do this, but the most commonplace is to simply call a phone number that you will provide when activating a fraud alert.  You’ll then need to order a credit report for yourself and be keenly aware of what is in it and be able to verify that information.  Know your own credit history and be able to identify anything in the report that might be fraudulent.

One of the ways that identity thieves work their black magic is to simply (very simply it seems) steal their victims’ wallets or purses.  The mere magnitude of information found in the average is staggering and a virtual gold mine that can turn a petty thief into a potential identity thief.  You would think that the steps you’d take to repair the damage done from a stolen wallet would be fairly common sense, but common sense isn’t always so common, so in the event that you find your wallet is stolen and along with it some very highly personal and private information, here are the steps you should take.  First of all, call all of your credit card and debit card institutions.  Request that all account numbers are changed.  You could also simply cancel all of your cards.  The folks at Identity Theft Labs don’t recommend that tack, however, because the outright canceling of cards, especially those that carry any kind of balance can severely and negatively impact your credit score.  Most banks have policies in place in the case of a lost or stolen wallet and will work on replacing the numbers rather than the outright cancellation of the cards or accounts. Be sure to impress upon your financial institutions that you would like new account numbers and that any mileage or other benefits be transferred in full to the new account.  Also be sure to ask about the same credit limits and same or better terms as this can also affect credit score.  Secondly, file a report with your local law enforcement department like the police or the sheriff’s office.  Having filed a report with the police is a vital step toward correcting any damage done, so be sure not to skip this very important step in the process.  Once you have filed the report, be sure to keep a copy for your own records.

Identity theft can affect anyone.  There is no safe person, not even children, or the dead that can’t fall victim to an identity thief.  There are studies that indicate the thievery is escalating every year and ignorance on the part of the consumer is chief among the reasons why.  There are many sources of information online that a consumer can access to help become educated on the facts and what to do to prevent becoming a victim of identity theft.  Financial institutions are also taking steps to protect their customers.  Something known as multifactor authentication has become more and more prevalent in the online community in order to ensure that the customer alone can access this highly sensitive and personal information on the other side of the firewall.  Multifactor authentication means that the user has to enter many forms of identification in order to access the information.  The idea is that while a thief, especially one that is personally acquainted with the victim might be able to easily guess his or her password.  However, guessing the password as well as coming up with the street he or she grew up on, or the name of his or her first pet is likely to prove a much harder task.  Many sites also include a photo or a series of words that only the user is likely to recognize or know.  It can also keep the user from falling victim to “phishing” emails.  If the user clicks on a link from an email that was sent, and is redirected to a site that looks similar to the financial institution’s site, but does not contain the proper site key or what have you, the user (hopefully) knows not to enter any personal information.  That email he or she received was likely a phishing email.  Criminals set them up to confuse and trick their victims into entering their login information with the criminal could then use to steal their money and their identity.

Criminals of the Information Age are crafty, underhanded, devious, and clever.  At one time, thieves merely picked pockets or robbed banks, but now with so much information store on computers and so many people knowing how to make computers sing their vaulted information, the crack down on criminal activity when it comes to identity theft takes tracking their moves online and in the world.  Thieves will resolve to do anything to get to private and personal information because here in the Information Age, information is money.  And money is King, but that doesn’t ring true for just the Information Age.  In the stealing of identities, criminals have been known to tap many different sources and among those sources are good old-fashioned stolen wallets.  The average person carries extremely personal and private information in their wallets.  Credit cards, identification with name and address and often birthday and sometimes-even social security information can be found in the folds of most wallets.  Stolen wallets and stolen paperwork also containing private information accounts for nearly half of all identity theft, according to a study done by Javelin Strategy and Research in 2009.  Online hacking, skimming, scamming, and spamming accounts for a surprisingly low 11% of all identity theft cases.  38% of victims found that their debit or credit cards had been stolen.  The physical card was not stolen in all cases, as the number alone can be used to do some damage as well.  37% of victims reported their identities stolen in the form of social security numbers being copied or fraudulently used without their knowledge.  36% of victims had their phone numbers in combination with their names fall into the wrong hands and 24% of the victims interviewed for the study by Javelin Strategy and Research in 2009 reported that their financial account numbers had been stolen.

Besides having funds stolen directly from their various accounts, victims of identity theft suffer massive other losses as well.  In fact, other than the thieves (should they get away with it) the losses stretch to many other institutions as well.  No one is safe from identity theft and although few people take any measures to prevent identity theft from happening in the first place, once it does occur, there is nothing on earth that would keep them from preventing it from happening again.  The sheer cost of the theft combined with the cost of repairing the damage done is staggering.  For example, according to a report made by Javelin Strategy and Research in 2008, the amount of existing account fraud topped more than 30 million dollars in the United States alone.  Businesses, often with the needs and rights of their customers in the front of their minds, cover the fraudulent costs to the tune of $221 billion worldwide.  That statistic comes to us from the Aberdeen Group.  So the thief purchases goods and services from the businesses using stolen or fraudulent information and when the victim brings it to the attention of the institution, the business is often the one taking the financial hit.  That can only result in higher prices to cover those costs.  There is no winner unless you count the thief that got away with it, and really, who does?  The ITRC Aftermath Study of 2004 tells us that victims lose between $850 and $1400 straight out of their own pockets when they try to resolve their identity theft.  The average loss to the consumer who falls victim to identity theft is $500.  Almost half of the victims of identity theft have reported problems getting a new loan after their identities are stolen.  70% of victims say that removing the faulty, negative information from their credit reports is extremely difficult.  That information comes to us again from the ITRC Aftermath Study of 2004.

People who find themselves victims of identity already have to deal with the feelings of violation, distrust, and paranoia that inevitable come with having their private and personal information hacked into.  On top of the emotional toll it takes having something like that happen, there is also the incredibly frustrating fallout that comes with having one’s identity stolen.  It can take years to fix the damage done by a single hacker looking for an easy score of cash, medical information, or supplies.  There are companies designed for the sole purpose of protecting their member’s personal and private information.  And there are companies whose sold purpose it is to study the fallout of identity theft and determine statistics based on the information they collect.  Chief among those statistics are the startling revelations into just what it means to recover one’s identity.  Javelin Strategy and Research did a study in 2009 and found that the growing pools of information regarding identity theft have resulted in over 25 million Americans purchases identity theft insurance.  If and when, heaven forbid, someone does fall victim to an identity thief, 46% of them have taken the step of installing antivirus software, anti spyware and firewalls on their computers, as that is the number one place hackers tend to hit.  Also according to Javelin Strategy and Research, 23% of victims changed financial institutions and 22% switched the companies that run their credit cards.  According to that same study, of the victims that were interviewed, all had to deal with multiple institutions in order to rectify the damage done.  66% contacted their banks and credit unions, 35% looked to their local law enforcement to assist in the reclamation of their identities, and 20% rely on the help of identity theft assistance companies. Not many, but 13% contact the Federal Trade commission to report the crime.

The damage done by identity thieves is so insidious, like water seeping into a basement, that it can hours, weeks, months and even years to undo the damage.  Without taking the necessary steps to protect his or her personal information including banking information, social security number, birthday, et cetera, the victim is setting him or herself up for a massive headache in trying to repair the damage done by the crafty thief.  As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  While the general human mentality is “it would never happen to me”  the truth is closer to “it could happen anyone.” The steps it takes to prevent identity theft are a fraction of the time and effort it takes to repair the damage once it is done.  According to the ITRC Aftermath Study of 2004, a victim is looking at a possible 5,840 hours to correct the destruction done by an identity thief.  To put that number in perspective, that amount of hours is equivalent to working a full time job to two years!!  That number is, of course, a rare extreme, but to that particular victim who did have to spend that time fixing his or her identity problems, that number is a sick reminder of how easily it might have been protected. The numbers for the average victim are much lower, but still enough to make the victim’s head spin.  That same study reports that it takes 330 hours to correct damage done on the average. It also reports that 26-32% of victims spend between four and six MONTHS working on undoing the destruction caused by their identity thief.  And to make matters worse, 11-23% of the victims spend a walloping seven months to a year repairing damage.  Those are startling figures.

Believe it or not, once someone’s identity has been stolen, it often takes the victim quite some time to realize that the damage has already been done.  Because we are much lazier records keepers than generations before, largely due to the fact that we rely so heavily upon computerized record keeping, the time lapse between the theft and the discovery of that theft is often quite large.  In fact, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center Aftermath Study in 2004, it was determined that 39-48% of victims realized that their identity had been stolen within three months and an astonishingly few 9-18% of those poor souls don’t discover the wrong doing for four or more years.  That means that all that damage has been done and perhaps doing more and more damage over the long years that it takes the victims to realize what had happened. According to our friends at Javelin Strategy and Research in a report they put out in 2009, 50.2 million American consumers were members of credit monitoring services to try to combat identity theft with early warning systems that come with the services of their credit monitoring companies. The credit monitoring company known as AnnualCreditReport.com saw 44% of the subscribing consumers to be their very own customers and again that number is reported in the 2009 report put out by Javelin Strategy and Research.  The identity thieves are already crafty, knowing the ins and outs of the system and the ways to exploit its weaknesses.  They also count on human nature and ignorance to help grease the wheels of that theft.  Without access to the statistics that are becoming more and more prevalent if the consumer does the necessary research, the thieves have a much broader sense of access to the information they need to make the heist of private and sensitive information of the victims.

Identity theft is a chronic and growing field of industry for crafty criminals.  Whereas once criminal were content to pickpocket or rob banks, the advancement of the Information Age has changed the very nature of theft.  If John Dillinger had lived in these days, who knows how he might have put his criminal mind to use.  Would he have devised a skimming program to lift private and personal information off unsecured websites?  Or would he have gone through his neighbor’s garbage looking for an unshredded credit card offer and opened a bank account in the neighbor’s name.  The fact is, criminals are stealing the identities of their victims and doing wrong in their names.  There are some frightening statistics out there and there is a lot we can learn just by knowing some of those statistics.  For example, according to the Javelin Strategy and Research Group, in 2008, the number of victims of identity theft rose to 10 million.  Also according to that same group, 2009 saw that one in every 10 consumers in the United States had already experienced the pain and suffering of identity theft.  The United States Department of Justice reported in 2005 that 1.6 million homes in the United States had experienced some kind of financial fraud other than that of credit cards.  They also reported that households in which the members made a combined income of over $70,000 were twice as likely to feel the sting of identity theft than those households whose combined income was less than $50,000.  A mere 7% of those that reported their identities having been stolen found themselves victims to medical identity theft, meaning that the criminals stole their personal and highly sensitive information with the intent to get medical services, prescription medication, or to be treated by doctors and hospitals with the burden of payment going to the victim.