[Contributed by an unidentified individual to Dave Farber's IP list,
For IP archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/ . PGN]
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. [[Identity withheld] via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 30]
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