There are so many great holidays approaching: my second-favorite, Halloween, is right around the corner, followed one month later by my very favorite, Turkey-Coma-Day! We’re preparing to mask our identities by dressing as ghosts, ghouls, and slutty versions of beloved childhood characters, but we need to remember how important it is to protect our true identities from the things that really go bump in the night.

Thankfully, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and the Council of Better Business Bureaus have teamed up to bring us National Protect Your Identity Week. Securing your identity against theft isn’t difficult, but we don’t all take the necessary steps to do so. We put things off, we think “that’ll never happen to me…” But last year it did happen to 10 million Americans, so you’re just gonna have to get off your butt and protect yourself!

No worries though, www.ProtectYourIDNow.org and Poorer Than You have you covered. On that site, you can take a quiz to assess your risk of identity theft, and learn some helpful tips to keep your identity safe. And starting tomorrow, I’ll be bringing giving you daily assignments for how you can protect your identity this week and year ‘round!

College students: pay particular attention to the tips available on the College Students and Identity Theft page.

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