Consumers, who become victims of identity theft through access to public records, do not have a clue as to how they became a victim. They cannot know unless the fraudster who "legally accessed" the public information is caught and confesses that they used or sold the information for identity theft. Most often end users of stolen identities are caught, not the kingpins. Illegal immigrants who purchase identities on the street sometimes for hundreds of dollars do not know the source.
* What can an identity thief do with a name and SSN? Here is a short list.
* Make a fake Social Security Card (see image below)
* Make a fake Medicare Card and get medical treatment and Medicare benefits
* Use the fake Social Security Card to get a driver's license or passport
* Get a job and government benefits.
* Get credit and open new financial accounts
* Get housing, utilities and phone service
* Get insurance
* Thieves use fake ID to elude law enforcement by pretending they are you.
The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve.
Obama, for example, would like to send out mass e-mail updates on presidential initiatives, but the White House does not have the technology in place to do so. The same goes for text messaging, another campaign staple.
Beyond the technological upgrades needed to enable text broadcasts, there are security and privacy rules to sort out involving the collection of cellphone numbers, according to Obama aides, who acknowledge being caught off guard by the strictures of government bureaucracy.
"This is uncharted territory," said Macon Phillips, White House director of new media, which was a midlevel position in previous administrations but has been boosted by Obama to a "special assistant to the president."
Identity thieves are getting more clever and are increasingly using stolen information to get driver's licenses, employment and government assistance, according to a new report.
The survey by the Identity Theft Resource Center also found that the greater awareness of this problem by the public has led to more people discovering they are victims themselves, through monitoring of their bank accounts and credit card statements.
Typically, victims learned of their identity theft when they were denied a job or credit or were informed by law enforcement.
"Most of our information is beyond our control," said Linda Foley, co-founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, which surveys victims each year to see how identity theft is changing. "If a thief wants to get it, he will find a way to get it."
The report covers the experiences of around 100 of the 1,500 people who were victimized in 2008 and contacted the center, a nonprofit that helps people recover from identity theft.
Stolen personal information is now cheap - identities may sell on the black market for as little as 60 cents each - and thieves churn through them quickly to lower their chances of getting caught, Foley said.
Rather than opening 10 or 20 credit card accounts in a victim's name, they now open two or three, charge as much as they can and move on to the next person.
This raises the cost of identity theft to businesses, whose average loss to fraud nearly doubled last year to $90,107, up from $48,941 the year before.
An Orange County woman accused of using a false identity to obtain breast implants from a plastic surgeon is now facing three felony charges, including commercial burglary, grand theft and identity theft.
Yvonne Jean Pampellonne, 30, nicknamed the 'Breast Implant Bandit', appeared in a Westminster court Wednesday. She did not enter a plea and asked that her arraignment be continued so she could hire a new attorney.
Pampellone surrendered to police in March after detectives caught up with her using breast implant tracking numbers.
Police say that in September of 2008 Pampellonne used the personal information of another woman to establish a line of credit at the Pacific Center for Plastic Surgery in Huntington Beach.
Doctors performed $12,000 in liposuction and breast augmentation surgery at the center, police say, charging $12,000 to the phony line of credit and exchanging her existing implants for new ones.
Medical staff at the center became suspicious after Pampellonne never returned for follow-up appointments. Because Pampellone had old breast implants replaced, they were able to track her down using the serial numbers that appear on every set of implants.
Pampellone faces 3 years, 8 months in prison if convicted. She remains free on $20,000 bail and is due back in court on June 29th.
Google decided to stop violating our privacy after they were caught? Now that's forward-thinking business strategy. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Some people think social media requires trust to be a sustainable model.
"Google has said that its world-roving Street View cars have
been collecting information sent over open WiFi networks, contradicting previous
assurances by the company.
This means that Google may have collected emails and other
private information if they traveled over WiFi networks while one of the cars
was in range. Previously, the company said no payload data was ever
intercepted."
IT companies seem to shoot their own effort in the foot on a regular basis. Usually due to a lack of process. The dot com bubble was small compared to what may be coming for trust in IT services.
Veterans suffering anxiety and paranoia following the theft of a government hard drive containing the medical histories and Social Security numbers of 198,000 of their brethren cannot recover financial damages, a federal appeals court says.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in largely dismissing a class-action, ruled Wednesday that the veterans could recoup at least $1,000 under the Privacy Act if they could show financial damages, not mental anguish.
What's more, the Atlanta-based court noted that the veterans - some already suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome from their Vietnam War days - likely could recover damages for mental anguish associated with the data breach if the lawsuit was before a different court.
That's because the courts of appeal across the nation have issued conflicting interpretations of the Privacy Act of 1974, which allows people to sue the government for privacy breaches and recover "actual damages." Precedent in the 11th Circuit, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia, interprets "actual damages" as money losses only.
So 198,000 veterans - whose life history was on a hard drive that vanished from a Birmingham, Alabama Veterans Administration hospital - are out of luck, even if their war-time paranoia was exacerbated by the breach.
The 11th Circuit noted (.pdf) that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "do not restrict 'actual damages' under the Privacy Act to pecuniary losses." And the Supreme Court has refused to resolve the circuit splits.
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