The Price of Convenience: Our Identities

by Squealing Sheep

Our government has let us down again.

They had an opportunity to pass legislation allowing citizens to protect their identities by allowing citizen-driven security freezes on their credit reports.  A security freeze would prevent alterations to a credit report without the person's express consent.

Unfortunately, big bucks won over our elected representatives, citing the inability to issue instant credit or post negative feedback about consumers, and the citizens are left to fend for themselves when it comes to personal identification safety.

The problem is this is setting up every citizen in our country to become a victim of identity theft, a crime in which personal information such as a name, address, or Social Security number is misused to obtain goods and services.

What our leaders fail to see is that - whether the security freeze legislation went through or not - our information is being compromised every day.  There is not one lawmaker truly lobbying for the protection of the citizens, the very same citizens electing the lawmakers to office.

Open up your local phone book to the residential listings.  Thousands of names, addresses, and phone numbers are at your disposal.

Unfortunately, it costs vigilant citizens money to keep their identifying information out of the phone book.  Citizens should not have to pay to protect themselves.  Let the citizens wanting to put their information on a billboard pay for that privilege.

Look at the business listings.  Businesses pay for the advertisements.  Why shouldn't average citizens?  Because the directory publisher won't be able to quantify the number of residents in the directory's publication area and if the company can't quantify the audience, it's pretty difficult to convince a business to buy advertising space.

Using a phone book, a savvy criminal can take just a name and address, slip it onto a check manufactured through any financial software program such as Quicken or QuickBooks available at a local office supply store for a nominal fee, and in a few seconds you have an identity theft victim.

Sure, the criminal may not have an account number belonging to the name, but businesses and banks don't always verify the information on a personal check.

Depending on the business, the routing and account number don't even have to be legitimate because the business doesn't subscribe to a check service to verify check information.

Those businesses run the account number through their own database to make sure the account hasn't passed bad checks at their locations.  If you keep your eyes open while making your purchases, you'll be able to figure out which businesses do this because they scan the check through their register, not a separate machine located nearby.

Some of these same businesses have policies to not ask for identification, for fear of inconveniencing their customers and losing business.  Think grocery store chains and big box stores.

If a business chooses to verify account information, all a criminal needs to do is track down a legitimate nine-digit routing number, which signifies which bank the check will be processed through.

It is possible to verify whether a routing number is legitimate at yourfavorite.com/checkwriter/verify.htm.

If the criminal doesn't have a routing number handy, it doesn't take long to figure out a nine-digit number through the verification site.

And if a criminal doesn't have time to manually figure out a routing number, lists of numbers are posted online.  It just takes a few seconds to run "bank routing numbers" through any available Internet search engine.

Add to that a few numbers (usually ten, but can range from six to eighteen) for an account number, which may or may not be connected to a real person, and the criminal is in business.

Using pieces of information like this allows a criminal to commit a crime in a virtually untraceable manner, leaving the business, the victims on the check, or the bank absorbing the loss.

Oftentimes it's the business or the bank because once the identity theft victim files a police report, the victim is reimbursed for any loss.  And when a bank or business absorbs a loss, doesn't it usually trickle to consumers?

But phone books are just the beginning of the number of ways our information is being compromised.

Laws already in effect are allowing the use of the world wide web to obtain additional personal information.

An example of this is community notification about sex offenders.  Most laws are written allowing law enforcement agencies to post the information on the Internet as a way to bypass regular notification through physical means.  Information about sex offenders can entail names, ages, even addresses.  In other words, more pieces of information to manipulate.

Have you perused the website belonging to your local city, county, or state government lately?

Check it out and you may find your property records or tax information available online.  In our governments' quest to put everything at the citizen's fingertips, they're also allowing gaping holes for our personal security to leak through.

Can you renew your vehicle tabs online?  Does it only take the plate number and the last six digits of the VIN to access the file?

Can you manipulate the information on file, such as the address?  If you can change the registration information online, you can become the owner of just about any vehicle on the road.

Once you're the owner you can report the vehicle stolen, leaving the true owner in a predicament when arrested for driving a stolen vehicle.  What if you were the person face down on the ground trying to explain to the law enforcement officer that you're driving your own vehicle?

The number of identity theft victims is staggering and growing every day.  Many victims don't find out they are victims until they receive an overdraft notice from their bank or apply for a mortgage and find a number of outstanding accounts.  The victims then contact the businesses, fill out affidavits, and file reports.  Hours are spent on the phone and at the post office.  A file grows with each letter sent and received.  Victims hope they get the issue settled in time to refinance their home or obtain cable TV service.

The information is out there.

It doesn't take much to use or misuse it in society today.  Protect your information with your life, because if your identity is stolen, you will spend your life trying to recover.