Lost Wallet = Identity Theft and Jail Time

Folks, the stories are starting to come in and the misconceptions are being debunked. A man in in St. Petersburg lost his wallet and it landed him in jail after someone tried to cash a check in his name. A big thank you to Thomas Lake, a reporter for The St. Petersburg Times, who did a tremendous amount of research and wrote a fantastic piece. Although I have never met Thomas, it is journalist like him who will help lift the veil and show the reality of this insidious crime.


"Costly Mistakes"

"A forgotten wallet leads to an error-riddled check fraud investigation. The cost to a man, his family and their community could be immeasurable."

By THOMAS LAKE
Published June 3, 2007

TAMPA -- "When it was over he stood in the laundromat, by the clothing revolving in fresh-scented soap, and he sighed as he thought of the dream that washed away."

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Synthetic Identity Theft

Thank you to Bill Garner for this recent story ...

We first heard of this type of Identity Theft in 2005 when idAnalytics, an identity management company, released their research on the topic. A recent report put out by an NBC affiliate in Milwaukee prompted this posting.

Synthetic ID Theft
John Mercure - Today's TMJ 4 Milwaukee

"There's a rapidly growing form of identity theft that's being called the most sinister yet. You may be a victim right now, and not even know it for years. It's called Synthetic ID Fraud, and there are red flags to watch for...so you can minimize the damage."


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Identity Theft - The Third Misconception

Through various conversations and research, it has become apparent to me that there are three major misconceptions about Identity Theft.

1. That it is just about your credit cards or your finances
2. That you can't be held liable for the debt racked up in your name by thieves
3. That you can take steps to 100% prevent the crime
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Identity Theft - The Third Misconception

"That you can take steps to 100% prevent the crime"

It truly amazes me that there are companies and so-called "experts" out there that tell you, and the rest of the marketplace for that matter, that there are steps you can take to completely prevent identity theft. Have you heard of the product that can lock your life down "Guaranteed"? The company CEO is so audacious in his claims that he actually posts his SSN on the entry page of the website. Well a good friend and mentor of mine says "Time will either promote you or expose you" and I have been saying since day one that this particular company is a ticking time-bomb. Curios to know what I am talking about, check this out. I wish the CEO no ill-will, but I love that he is a victim of a crime that he says his product guarantees he can't be a victim of.

I only wish I would have written my post about the Five Common Types of Identity Theft earlier. Maybe they would have known that locking down you credit, which is something you can do on your own by that way, can't help in every area of Identity theft. Oh well ...

Wow, I guess you can even get tangential in a blog ... okay, back to the matter at hand. Why do I know that you can't 100% prevent the crime? Simple, it is not about what you do with your information, but what others do. See all the shredding in the world cannot stop a company who has your personal information from losing it or having it stolen. It is a concept I call, The DataBased You TM.

The DataBased You is the sum total of all of the information about you in the marketplace, whether on paper of electronic, that can build a better biography of you than you could of yourself. Think about this ...

Your name is literally in thousands of databases. Your address is as well. Your social security number is with The Social Security Administration and everyone you have ever given it to. You criminal record and legal history is out there. You real estate is a matter of public record (check out Zillow and put in your address). Your military history. Your employment history. Your insurance claims. Your driving record and car registration. Your phone number. The tracking information your GPS chip in your cell phone tells your provider where you are 24/7 ... and so on.

The point is, there are thousands of records, that are out your control, that have your private information in them. Between February 15th, 2005 and June 14th, 2007, whether it was hacking, lost computers, or lost data tapes, there were 155,166,602 records containing sensitive personal information lost! The question is, did one or more of them contain YOUR information?

No matter what you shred or what you buy, there is nothing you can do to 100% prevent Identity Theft from happening to you.