New Age Theft

The topic of identity theft is particularly interesting to me. Although my life has not been totally ruined by someone stealing my social security number, I have been the victim of someone somehow obtaining my debit card information and stealing money from me.

I decided before one of my last vacations that I should order a new debit card from my bank because the signature strip on the back of mine had completely been rubbed off. If you look at your cards closely, you will notice that when this happens the card is actually void but no one really pays attention to it so I had not had any problems in my state. However, I didn't want to experience problems while away so I did in fact order and receive a new card which I activated and began to use. I am aware that people are stealing identities and money from others so I obviously knew not to just throw the card away. I didn't have time to shred it so I left it in an envelope in my home also making the assumption that the bank had closed this card since I had ordered the new one.

I received a call one night from the fraud department of my bank asking about some charges that had been placed within a few minutes time. Sure enough I logged into my account and saw debits that had been made at 3 different stores. One that I had never even heard of!!

I asked the fraud department many questions concerning how this could have happened and they were able to offer few answers. The only thing they could offer was that my old card number had been used; the one I thought was canceled. I then found out from my bank that when you order a new card they don't automatically cancel the old one. This still baffles me...why does a single non joint account holder need two debit cards for one checking account? I eventually got the situation straightened out and was able to sign an affidavit stating that I did not make the charges and the bank refunded all of my money.

I found the story of Albert Gonzalez to be very interesting. Mostly because he was involved in stealing information from stores such as TJ Maxx and in the story I talked about my information was used at AJ Wright which is like a sister store to TJ Maxx. Although probably not related, it definitely caught my attention. (http://lawvibe.com/the-retail-store-hacker-albert-gonzalez-now-faces-prison-time/)

I read something a while ago that talked about how thieves were scraping the numbers off cards and then using glue to put these numbers on other cards to match people's card numbers in which they had received from a large data base. Once the numbers are glued the thief will scratch the magnetic strip so that the person at the store will enter in the numbers on the card manually. Since people rarely ask for ID the thief has an instant "credit card" with access to someone else's account.

This is an interesting site which also discusses ways thieves are able to obtain a person's credit and debit card info
http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/abbynews/news/53240647.html

Some things you can do to protect your financial information are to remember to shred all of you financial documents. Make sure when you are purchasing something online that you are using a secure site and the the URL is actually correct. Never give our your information over email. Even if you get an email from a company you are in business with, call that company! If you order a new card from a bank, call and cancel the old one and then shred it. Don't allow people to look over your shoulder when you are entering you pin number. Make sure you don't leave important information in your car! This is probably not the case in most states, but in GA, our driver's license numbers used to be our social security number. If yours in, change it!

When you open an account with a bank for credit, checking, etc, be aware of what their policy is on unauthorized charges. While I was able to get all of my money returned this is not the case with everyone. A lot of people are signing up for credit monitoring services but remember you can monitor your accounts yourself for free and should be doing so. Check your accounts daily to confirm all of the transactions.