So, you’ve been keeping up on Identity Theft Week here at PTY and all you can think to yourself is “Wow! This is awesome! I wish someone would come along and steal my identity, so that I, too, can join the throng of victims!” I understand. Having your identity stolen is the “new black.” So I’ve developed this handy guide to help you get your identity stolen, and make it easy for identity thieves to do a lot of damage.

(I suppose, if for some reason you don’t want your identity stolen, you could just do the opposite of everything in this post. If that’s the way you want to go.)

Social Security Number: The One Piece They Really Need
The fastest, easiest way to get your identity stolen would be to hand out your Social Security number like candy. If you’re filling out paperwork, or are on the phone, and you’re asked for your social security number, give it out freely! Never question why they might need it, and even if the service or person you’re talking to really needs it at all.

In truth, the only time anyone should need your SSN is for tax purposes, such as employment, or savings accounts that pay taxable interest. But if you can maximize the amount of other times you give out your SSN, then you probably don’t need to do anything else to get your identity stolen!

For bonus points, use your SSN as a username or password for as many web sites as you can!

The Shredder: Your Natural Enemy
Nothing deters your friendly neighborhood ID thief like a paper shredder! If you shred the mail you throw away instead of simply pitching it, then ID thieves can’t get your personal information off of it, now can they? You’d be surprised how little information they really need - so it’s probably best not to shred anything at all. Good, now you’re one bank statement away from ID theft!

Your Mailbox is Your Portal to ID Theft Fun!
Do you know what the nickname for the red flag on a mailbox is? It’s called the “Come Steal Me” flag! Yes, mail your checks and important paperwork out of your driveway mailbox - because those big, ugly blue boxes are near-impossible for ID thieves to get into. And if they can’t get into it, how are they going to get your mail?

Debit Cards - Of Course I Want to Be Liable for the Charges!
Credit cards and debit cards offer different layers of protection for fraudulent charges. If you use a credit card for all of your non-cash purchases (and pay it off every month), then you’re no liable if an ID thief uses your card. But with a debit card, the money instantly goes out of your account (probably even causing you to overdraft!), and won’t be put back until it’s proven that you didn’t make those charges. It’s almost like giving ID thieves a free loan from your checking account!

Checks - Easily Stolen, Forged, and Duplicated!
High-class ID thieves will use the checks you write - either to lift your signature, get your account number, or simply to deposit into their own account (if they can manage it). So memorize this simple phrase for every transaction you make: “Will you take a check?”

RECAP TIME!

• Give out your Social Security number all the time, for any reason. Never question it.
• Don’t shred papers containing personal information before you throw them out.
• Send mail out of your own mailbox, with the “come steal me” flag!
• Use a debit card instead of a credit card, to maximize the damage an ID thief can do.
• Write checks whenever you can.

If you’ve followed these simple steps, congratulations! Your identity has probably already been stolen! Now go check your credit report and make sure!

Sources:
Consumerist: How Frank Abagnale Protects Himself From Identity Theft
Identity Theft: Stolen Futures (video)

A friend of mine that has the glorious privilege to still be in high school came to me with a question the other day. She received a letter from Certegy, telling her that one of her bank accounts was involved in the massive records scandal. In other words, all of her account information had been sold to direct marketing companies.

Ouch. She wanted to know if she should be concerned, even though the letter said there had been no evidence of fraud or identity theft. But I shared with her a nugget that most of us would rather not face: you should always be concerned with identity theft, even if you think you’re too young, or your financial history is too short (or non-existent).

I didn’t get to see the letter myself, but she told me that it included a suggestion that she check her credit reports on annualcreditreport.com, for fraudulent activity. I seconded this suggestion, and in fact, I offer it as a suggestion to every high school senior, even those who have never received a letter of this sort.

 Why should every high school senior check their credit reports? Because about a year from now, you’re probably going to be beginning your real financial life. You might go to college and get student loans. Or you might enter the workforce and get checking accounts, cars loans, apartments, and utilities. And any of these things could be made difficult or literally impossible if your identity has been stolen.

Never Too Young to Have Your Identity Stolen, a recent article in the New York Times, sheds some shocking light on identity theft and minors. The big problem with this particular brand of ID theft is that ?people may not even realize they?ve been a victim until they?re adults and they try to get credit.? It’s hard to imagine someone using your Social Security number when you yourself have yet to use it for anything.

But not only is it possible, but it’s a growing problem. “The Federal Trade Commission … received more than 11,600 identity theft reports in 2005 for victims 18 years old or under, nearly double the 6,512 reported in 2003.”

Scared yet? Well, it’s nothing to lose sleep over - just something to keep in the back of your head, and use common sense to protect yourself. The Identity Theft Resource Center has a Teen Space with tips, quizzes, and videos to help you protect yourself, as well.

The following chain-email happened into my inbox the other day:

Most of us take the summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced. Fall for it and your identity could be stolen, reports CBS.

In this con, someone calls pretending to be a court official who threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you didn’t show up for jury duty. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator.

If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so that he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant.

Sometimes they even ask for credit card numbers. Give out any of this information and … Bingo! Your identity has just been stolen. The scam has been reported so far in 11 states. This scam is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try and bully people into giving information by pretending they’re with the court system. The FBI and federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Pass this on.

I checked Snopes and this is for real. Here is the link if you want to check it out.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

(Emphasis added by me)

I did, in fact, check out the Snopes article, although I really didn’t need to. Though I haven’t heard of this particular scam before, intimidating phone calls have long been a weapon of the identity thief. I believed the email right off the bat (which isn’t something I ordinarily do).

The Snopes article explains that the jury scam email began to appear in 2005, and even then, the scam itself wasn’t new - the reports date back to 2001.

Let’s be honest here - identity thieves love the phone. They don’t have to find an official uniform in order to convince you of their authority - all they need is a 1-800 number (which I hear you can now get in specially marked boxes of cereal).

So how can you protect yourself against phone scammers? Well, you can be like me and never answer phone calls that come from a number you don’t recognize. I mainly do that because I have tele-phobia (no, seriously), but it also keeps the scammers away. Barring that (or if you don’t have caller ID), Snopes has some tips on how to combat identity thieves over the phone:

• Court workers will not telephone to say you’ve missed jury duty… so dismiss fraudulent phone calls of this nature. (Also, any warrant would be issued in person, anyway. So if someone calls saying they have a warrant for your arrest… they don’t.)
• Do not give out bank account, social security, or credit card numbers over the phone if you didn’t initiate the call, whether it be to someone trying to sell you something or to someone who claims to be from a bank or government department. If such callers insist upon “verifying” such information with you, have them read the data to you from their notes, with you saying yea or nay to it rather than the other way around.

I’ll delve more into ways to protect yourself from identity thieves later, but for now… at least you understand why I’m afraid of the telephone.

Get ready everyone, because for the next week, we’re going to talk about nothing but identity theft here on PTY. Why? Honestly, because I have a bunch of posts pent up about identity theft. But more importantly, because it’s about the scariest thing that can happen to you financially. It’s one thing to dig yourself into a hole - it’s another thing to have someone else do it for you.

So be excited. Identity theft, yay! (Well, no, not really. Boo to identity theft!)

If you want to go ahead and bookmark this post, I’ll be updating it with links to all of the identity theft posts I put up this week. Or, you could just make it easy on yourself and subscribe to my RSS feed in your handy-dandy feed reader.

Identity Theft Week Posts:

Jury Duty and Other Identity Theft Scams
High Schoolers: Beware of Identity Theft
Tips and Tricks to Get Your Identity Stolen!
Identity Stolen! Now What?

and more!*

*Maybe

Gather around the campfire, everyone - I have a scary story to tell you. *Puts flashlight up to her chin, illuminating only part of her face.*

Imagine for yourselves, a wary traveler. She has spent 7 hours sitting in an airport, because her flight was to leave at 6:30am, and she was leaving from an airport that was far from her home, so it was hard to find a ride there past midnight. Think of this tired traveler, who has not managed to even nap yet.

Picture her tiredly checking her two bags of luggage, after having diligently watched over them all night in the airport lobby. And now, see her taking her backpack and laptop through airport security, and laughing at her travel companion when he has to go through the “special” security line. Oh yes, she laughs now, for she does not know what is coming.

Another two hours pass as the traveler and her companion sit at the gate. They try to access the intertubes, but Buffalo/Niagara International Airport tries to demand a fee of $6.95. The traveler and her companion scoff at the idea of paying for wireless internet in an airport.

Finally, the time comes to board the first of their two long flights. The traveler and her companion settle down into seats 5E and 5F, and as soon as the plane begins to roll along the runway, and the safety video begins to play, the traveler drifts off to sleep.

Content in her rest, the traveler feels safe. Until, suddenly, an announcement comes over the loud speaker.

Oh no! What important airplane announcement must be so loud as to wake our gentle protagonist from her slumber? Have we hit a batch of turbulence? Did we lose an engine? Did we lose an entire wing?

No, my listeners, the horror about to attack our travel was far worse. The announcement over the speaker was… was… was…

An advertisement for a US Airways/Bank of America credit card. You could get 20,000 miles just for signing up! And you’ll also get miles for the flight you’re on right now!

Come back to the fire, my listeners! Do not run away in fright! You are safe here by my blog campfire, the airline mile credit cards cannot get you here. But I must release an important secret I have been hiding from you. Yes, you must know: I was that traveler!

And I don’t appreciate being woken up on an airplane just to be advertised a Visa card. It was a pretty good card, too, with a no-fee 0% balance transfer offer that I could have used. But I decided that because they’d woken me up, they didn’t deserve my business.

P.S. - They did it again on my second flight. Luckily, neither of us were sleeping that time.

Update: It appears that Citibank has dropped this offer down to a $50 bonus instead of a $100 bonus. Everything else in this post still applies, however.

A few months ago, Citibank offered a $100 bonus for opening an “Ultimate Savings Account” with them. I snapped at the offer, even though the accounts 4.75% APY is slightly lower than many online savings accounts. And now, Citibank is handing out this $100 bonus offer once again.

If you interested in an easy $100 like I was, you might be interested in what I learned from my experience:

~ You need to have never held a bank account with Citi before in order to qualify for the bonus. As far as I know, this refers to checking and savings account, but not credit cards.

~ The account is pretty standard as far as online savings accounts go. There is no minimum balance required and no monthly fees. I used $1 as my opening deposit and just left it there.

~ They ask for an awful lot of information when you’re opening your account. It’s been a few months, but I seem to remember having to run out of the room to track down paperwork and look things up. Also, they will do a hard credit pull (a credit check that will slightly lower your credit score for about a year).

~ The offer says the bonus may take as long as 90 days to appear in your account. I recommend marking your calendar three months from the day you open it, and if you don’t receive the bonus by then, to start writing some emails or making some phone calls. My $100 took 45 days to appear in my account.

~ The current offer expires on 8/31/07, so if you’re planning to take advantage of the offer, be sure to apply for your account before that deadline (probably at least several days before, just to be sure).

Now that my $100 bonus is finally in my account, I’m going to buy a Wii! Just kidding. I’m probably going to let it sit in the account for as long as I can, let it earn a little interest, and then throw it at my debt. Yep, I’m boring and practical like that.

[Hat tip to Jonathon at My Money Blog for pointing out Citibank renewing their $100 bonus offer.] 

Glorious Part I of Stephanie’s “How To Live Without Television”

I’m sitting in my living room, a cautious eye on the Time Warner guys that have come out to my house to deliver what I refer to as ”the demon signal” (aka cable). I’m not a giant fan of cable to begin with, but Time Warner and I have a torrid past to boot, so I basically loathe the company. But I’m being polite to the install guys, because, hey, it’s not their fault. Also, it wasn’t my idea to put cable in this house.

But the real reason I’m giving you up-to-the-minute updates on my cable installation is to share the details of a rather odd piece of paper that was placed on my dining room table - the work order.

Installation and service fee: $72.80

Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Lame.

Monthly service: $61.56

…

Now, I’m not here to tell you what entertainment you should or should not put your money into. But I’ll run the numbers: if instead of getting cable, my family took that installation fee and invested it, and added that $61.56 every month, and got 8% returns… we’d have $36,849.02 after just 20 years.

I’m just sayin’.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be your grandparent, but buying your first car from a member of the elderly community has some awesome perks. My car (nicknamed Fity Thou’) serves as the example of what a sweet deal you could land.

Why My Granny Car Ownz:

• I got it for $2000 and was allowed to pay monthly, with no interest. Grandmas are so sweet!
• Low mileage. I got it in November and it didn’t even hit 50,000 miles until yesterday (see the sweet picture I forced my passenger to take).
• Taken care of well. When my grandfather was alive, he made sure it saw regular checkups. My grandmother continued the trend, and she didn’t drive it much anyway (see “low mileage” above).
• All leather interior.
• Random perks left inside, specifically for me. I think she gave me two ice scrapers and three boxes of tissues.

If you’re shopping for a first car for yourself or (heaven help you) a teenage child, consider moseying your way up to the nearest retirement community.

We humans do not like to give up luxuries that we’ve become accustomed to. When a personal finance blogger suggests that someone in financial peril cut the cable or satellite, the person in trouble often balks at the idea. Who can live without cable in this day and age?

Strangely enough, I can. I didn’t think it was possible. Even as a kid, when we didn’t have cable, my life revolved around the glowing box in the living room. I grew up on “Seasame Street” and T.G.I.F. (back when it was still good). And when I was 8, we moved to a house that was less in the middle-of-nowhere, and got cable. Suddenly my life revolved around all the wonderful shows that Nickelodeon could offer me (oh “Salute Your Shorts,” how I miss you).

By the time we moved back to the middle-of-nowhere house five years later, we were all addicted. We still couldn’t get cable out there, so we mounted a satellite dish on the roof and received the joy of 150 channels - minus the local stuff.

That’s where I think this whole thing began. You get used to saying “I don’t get the local stations.” You get used to not having it anymore. Eventually our satellite brought us local channels too, but we tended to forget they were there, after not having them for so long.

When I went off to college, my dorm offered free basic cable, or you could upgrade to digital cable for a monthly fee. I was puzzled by all of the people I saw grabbing up the digital boxes. What more were they paying for, exactly? I was entirely happy with my free Sci-Fi channel and Comedy Central. And when exactly did they think they were going to have time to watch these excessive channels they were signing up for?

I myself only managed to watch the images on the Magical Moving Picture Box when friends came over to hang out. And usually we dragged my DVD player into the lounge, instead of watching whatever scheduled shows the TV had to offer.

When I moved home this past December, my mother proclaimed that she was going to cancel the satellite to help offset the cost of me living there. I thought about it for a moment - canceling the satellite meant no live television at all. Our feeble “rabbit ear” antenna couldn’t even pick up the local stations for us. I would be cut off, let only with my DVD player for comfort.

But it didn’t really bother me. And the fact is, you can live without TV better today than you could just a few years ago, and here’s why:

• All of the four major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) offer several of their shows on their website. Despite my lack of TV, I’m entirely on the ball with LOST, Heroes and Grey’s Anatomy.
• TV on DVD has become a major force. It’s how I’ve seen the first seasons of LOST and Grey’s, and the entire series of Angel, Buffy, Firefly and Coupling. And you don’t necessarily have to buy the DVDs new: you could buy them used on eBay, rent them from Netflix, or do what I do: borrow them from your friends!
• There’s more free entertainment on the internet than you could possibly absorb in a lifetime. Yes, not everything on YouTube is worth watching, but then there’s always something like Barats and Bereta that totally is (I recommend the Mother’s Day video to start with).

In about a week, cable will be installed in our new house. And I don’t care.

Read the dramatic conclusion in “How To Live Without Television - Part II”

I know, I know - I’ve disappeared lately. The move from the country to the suburbs has taken up more of my time than I anticipated. Also, my friends have become suddenly much more distracting! However, the period of neglect is over, so let’s see how things changed over the month of June:

Change: $333, or +1.17%

Woot! Still, I’m not entirely happy with myself. I did a lot of spending - mostly food and gas to visit friends and a spattering of concert tickets and movies. And in a few days, I’ll be buying a plane ticket to California and wondering why I bought all of those things!

But, I’m pretty ecstatic nonetheless, because I was worried that with my laptop purchase and everything that this might be “negative” month, but $333 richer certainly makes me happy!

For a breakdown of my assets and liabilities, check out my NetworthIQ for June. There’s also an explanation of my NetworthIQ categories.