Community poll forum: Where are you most vulnerable to identity theft?

Yes lewisedge, I agree with you especially if you have a curbside mailbox. I almost had 4 outgoing letters with personal checks in them stolen when my apartment complex's outgoing mailbox was raided. Thieves ripped the big door off its hinges to get at the outgoing mail. They also exposed individual boxes. I was lucky and barely missed it.

I also received a call from a debt collection agency today. I checked them out on the web and they made Bud Hibbs' top ten list of the worst ones. A man is or was using my address as contact info!

If enough of us are vocal enough I am sure Congress will listen. Every vote counts. English was chosen over German as our national language by just one vote. How different 20th century history would have been if German were the official American language.

Watch the back end. Too many times websites acquired SSL certificates and secured their forms and page communication with 128 bit security only to follow-up with plain text emails confirming the transaction and containing way too much transactional and personal information in the open.

Security like that is hardly boosted.

deium

I had a credit card statement taken out of my mailbox which is on the street. From that statement, they had my account number and it took no genius to figure out my expiration date. They charged over $2000.00 over the internet. I have now stopped all my credit cards statements from being mailed. I get them from the companies themselves over the internet... I have also had my wallet stolen, which is just as bad for identify theft. Rebafan

Five days a week, I have a great mailman. On the "fill-in" day of the week, I get an idiot in a postal uniform, who is just worthless. When he's all done delivering, the neighbors all get together & play musical mail with all of his misdeliveries. This has gone on for quite some time. He's not gotten any better at his job, and I think I'm gonna have to complain, and get the guy "reasigned." Hate to see the guy lose his job, but too much is at stake. I worry more about the dishonest people in my rapidly declining neighborhood, that might be getting my personal info handed to them by the bumbling mailman.

Not only do they get stolen from the mailboxes, or trash if they are not cut up into tiny pieces, are they easily accessible but the ones we all receive from companies that are pre-approved and activated by the first use trap us. We were victims, were sued without our knowledge and two years later we accidentally learned about it. After four years of lawyers, etc. we have finally succeeded in fixing it. Don't think we are the same happy go lucky people we were back then. Please check your credit and request a hold on your credit reports so anyone asking about you must contact you personally!!!!

I don't know what kind of bad neighborhood you live in, but in my neighborhood a stranger rifling through curbside mailboxes would ne noticed in a few seconds, and the police would be called. Also, I don't tempt fate by putting outgoing payments in the mailbox. I do all bill payments through my bank's online BillPay. That way the payment is guaranteed to be on time.

About 2 years ago I investigated a burglary where a checkbook was stolen. I advised the victim to contact her bank and report the stolen checkbook. She was given a case number and this was given to the bank. I was present when she called the bank and requested that if the checks were used to hold on to them for evidence purposes.

About 2 weeks later I received faxes of the stolen checks. The fax copies were extremely poor (I still don't understand with today's technology, why faxes still look like crap). All the fax copies had a visible ink fingerprint (from the suspect). So natually we contacted the bank and requested the original checks so I could get the fingerprints of the suspect, since I couldn't read the name on the fax copied checks.

The bank's response, "We shreaded them." The dates on the fax copy checks were after when the victim notified the bank, so they knew to hold on to them. So I went off on a poor teller, who had nothing to do with the destruction of evidence.

The bottom line, banks don't like to help law enforcement. I haven't figured out why, but I figure that their logic is that it's easier to pay the victim back a couple of $1,000 dollars instead of investing the time to investigate, and possibly prosecute a criminal.

I guess our high mortgages have to pay for something.

it happened at the company I work for. I'm not allowed to give details out of the office, but there was absolutely nothing we could do, and we had no rights, because the merchandise was bought with a stolen credit card.

I read an article, but I forget where, that it's in the credit companies interest for things to be this way. They make billions a year now (that figure stunned me, but the author provided statistical sources for it) in those chargeback fees, and don't lose anything, and the general consumer is happy and doesn't lose anything, the only person to lose are the merchants, who people tend to view as the 'bad guys' ripping them off with overinflated prices or whatever anyway.

It would be foolish for the credit card companies to change this, as they'd lose al that chargeback fee revenue and incur security expenses.

I live in Canada,Last year I applied for a second credit card from Master card and as I was filling out the form my Norton stopped the action ,and said there was an intruder trying to access my pc.I contacted The Bank of Montreal and explained what happened.They had meetings to find out what happened.

The bank kept in touch with me by phone letting me know what was happening?I do as little as possible buisness on line.
I realize that the convenience of some of the modern accessories,but it seems to be the price we pay for our lifestyle.
Cell phones are geat,but most of us can do with out them,especially ,in the car driving,shopping for clothes etc.
No one can convince me that you can,t shop,drive or walk down a street without a cell phone sticking out of your ear.
It is getting to look like a status symble,it looks silly.
I think twice before doing many things on line or cell phone.We have become a society of machine oriented people .

Yeah, and what fun that is trying to avoid. They tell us not to travel with large amounts of money, use our credit cards. And...wham. I suppose there are always money orders, but then you still have to show your id, and give out information that can be used against you with that. Catch 22.

I don't give hotel clerks my card. I make them charge the stay to my company account. Luckily, the company I work for has adopted this practice, rather then do reimbursements.

What about the people we invite into our homes, friends and strangers.

How about that house-cleaner, repair person, friend, or relatives? Many stolen checks, credit card numbers, etc. are stolen everyday by people we invite into our homes, not just during a break-in.

If I recall correctly, many of those credit applications filled out by the public, whether online or via paper, are processed by prisoners.
To you and me, this makes no sense, but to the credit card companies its cheap data processing labor.

I think the biggest problem with identity theft is that most of us users who are in our 50's+and have just started to use the computer are behind the scale as to just what is involved with the whole problem. I.E. How and what we need to do to protect ourselves from identity theft. I was 54 when I started on the computer and had to learn everything the hard way,four years later I am still learning things dailey. Since there are many Millions, Billions or Trillions of bytes now on the internet web there is know way of knowing for sure that My computer will be safe after being on the Web even with the best anti-virus and spyware installs, there are still no gaurantees that you are protected from some hacker that is smarter then all your protection, as,the hacker ,works by the minute to defeat the best out there.So I guess My question is,is there really anyway to be 100% protected? I think that the best protection is to use as little as possible of your cedit cards and bank accounts at this time. Yours truly S Campbell