Prevent Identity Fraud- For Real?
Can You Really Prevent Identity Fraud?
In order to prevent identity fraud, we must satisfy two requirements.
First, we must prevent our personal information from being available to an idthief and secondly, we have to somehow stop the id thief from stealing it. It should be quite clear that those two things are totally out of our control. The end result is: no one can really prevent id theft.
There are some steps we may take however, that can limit the opportunities a thief is presented with. Throughout our website we have covered many tips and tactics that we have found useful in our fight against identity theft. Go to our Identity Fraud Resources page for more information.
How To Protect Against Identity Theft And Fraud
Here are a few more tips, geared particularly towards id theft protection to add to those already covered.
- Identity Theft in schools and on the road. A child’s personal information should only be supplied once to the school’s administration, at which time they should be given an identification card that does not have their social security number. A lost social security card is very high up on the list of reasons for credit theft
- Make sure that the physician is taking proper precautions with your children and your personal information. Medical identity theft is a growing problem nationwide according to the consumer gov idtheft hotline.
- Only carry Social Security Cards and Health Insurance cards with you on the days they are needed to prevent ending up with a social security card lost. Social Security Fraud is on the FTC’s Top 4 List of fraud cases.
- Identity Theft at home. Immediately place a lock on your mailbox. Ideally, a monthly post office box would be a wise investment if you regularly spend time away from home each month.
- Treat your driver’s license number and SSN as you would treat currency. You don’t go around giving your money out to just anyone who asks for it, do you?
- Children are notorious for giving out personal information over the telephone. Start training them early on ways to institute protection against identity theft. Give them identity theft tips on how scammers use the telephone to prey on children just like themselves. You may be surprised how even young children become tuned in to the task of preventing identity theft.
- Prevent Identity Theft on the job. A business should only collect the information they need. Never provide a credit card as identification when making payments by check. Have an alternative form of id.
- Encrypt all sensitive information that may be view by others, including employees and vendors. Use password protection on files and change your password once a week for safe measure.
- Ensure your employer has a secure location for employee and other business contacts records. If they don’t, urge them to do so ASAP. Employers can be held liable for losing employees personal information.
“There is a wide divide between The States and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies in regards to ID Theft. You can forget about them being on the same page, they are not even in the same book.”
Is the Federal Government doing enough to Prevent Identity Fraud And Theft?
This question is too broad based and cannot be answered properly. Logic dictates that the word ‘enough’ will have various meaning for various people and therefore renders the question without merit.
A more accurate question to ask would be, “According to the numbers reported, is the Federal Government winning in its fight to prevent identity theft”?
Based on this second question, we would have to say no.
Here are our reasons why. Every year, more and more people are falling victim to this crime. The increase is almost exponential. There is no corresponding exponential growth in the number of people they are prosecuting as identity thieves.
The States and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies are not even close to being on the same page when it comes to the crime of identity theft. There was no standardized process on how to take a report, who to submit it to and how to take action o the report until 2004 with the passage of the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act.
Today, over 6 years later, most local law enforcement agencies still struggle with the particulars of the Act. Instead, they end up passing the buck to other agencies, sometimes even directing the victims to report it to other agencies like the FBI, first, since it was out of their “jurisdiction”.
And finally, we propose that since the banking industry has not really done anything of significance to prevent identity theft, then we have an uphill battle ahead of us.
The credit bureaus are still allowed to sell personal information on the internet at will as we discussed in another section of our website. This has to signal that the Federal Government is not advancing in their identity theft prevention campaign.
So, if we cannot prevent identity fraud, what can we do about it? We can definitely learn how to protect against identity theft. Here’s a place to start. Identity Protection Plan.
