FTC Recruiting Identity Theft Victims 48
coondoggie writes "In an effort to buttress its enforcement and better understand the scourge that is identity theft, the Federal Trade Commission said today its plans to conduct a wide-ranging study of victims of the crime.
The FTC is looking for people harmed by the crime and said the survey will examine the remedies available to victims under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act). Among other things, the FACT Act gave consumers the right to place fraud alerts on their credit files if they are, or suspect they may become, victims of identity theft; block information on their credit reports that resulted from identity theft; and obtain copies of their credit reports free of charge."
My identity theft story from this week (Score:5, Interesting)
These people have some balls, it's actually kind of funny.
They sent me a letter in the mail pretending to be my bank, saying there are suspicious charges and to call this fraud number. Had the right mailing address and all of the logo's..etc
Of course the number was a phishing scam! They were asking me security questions to verify I was the cardholder, and little did I know my card was already maxed out 4 days ago. I'm guessing they wanted to reuse my information to call my bank and request the credit limit to be increased so they could keep on spending.
Fortunately my bullshit detector went off and I hung up, cross referenced the number..etc which confirmed my suspicions. I called the actual fraud line about 30 seconds later to take care of my slip up, and that's when I found out about all of the other charges. The BS part about it all is that none of the charges ever showed up on my online transaction history, so even if I were checking that by the hour I never would have been tipped off.
Anyway these guys can be pretty sneaky, but I was really disappointed in Chase for not having the transactions posted. At least I'm told that I won't have to pay any of the fees.
Re:Blockbuster does not need your SSN (Score:3, Interesting)
Hollywood Video is even worse. I went to Hollywood video when Blockbuster didn't have the movie I wanted, and they wanted an automobile registration!
Thankfully now we have Redbox [slashdot.org]. Just don't pick up movies at McDonalds.
I can attest to one major flaw in our system. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the past, I have conducted background investigations for the DoD as a contractor. I came across some very interesting credit histories on a guy and had to ask him some questions. I cannot go into details but, simply put:
When he was too young to work, someone began working under his name and SSN. He did not discover this until he was in his late teens. When he contacted the IRS, the IRS was concerned, but they MADE TWO SEPARATE ACCOUNTS UNDER THE SAME SSN TO DISTINGUISH THE TWO.
This was quite alarming to me, though it satisfied my goals in the investigation. I could not understand how the IRS would take such a haphazard approach to dealing with identity theft. How can they continue to allow a person to work, obviously illegally, under a stolen identity? Yes, I know the IRS merely collects taxes, but they were collecting from a stolen identity long after they were made aware.
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From this, the flaw is lack of governmental intercooperation regarding identity theft. I cannot attest to present time, but in 2005, the IRS was still allowing the thief to work and pay taxes.
The employer (pretty big company) and location were well known, yet the 'thief' was not stopped over several years. ........ I can only hope our various branches are now working together to protect our citizens first.
Re:I can attest to one major flaw in our system. (Score:1, Interesting)
This happens all the time in the Tex-Mex border. Many Mexican citizens have SSN numbers because they are legal residents. Sometimes they will lend out their SSNs to illegals. Well the illegals then work and pay into their original guy's Social Security. Then when it's retirement age they collect Social Security checks without having to have put in all that work. There's a small cottage market of delivery boxes set up just for collecting SS checks on the border. Pretty sweet deal.
Re:and obtain copies of their credit reports free (Score:2, Interesting)
I can attest to this. I did my free annual credit report a few months ago. I've been getting spammed like hell hell from transunion. Granted I might have missed a checkbox or something, I don't really remember, but I get at least 2 emails a week from them. My wife did the same, and got the same.
So really just to access information that severely affects my life, I get spammed to high heaven.