Authorities are struggling to combat a computer-based crime wave, writes
Peter Huck.
Ever wonder what would happen if someone had taken one of your credit cards
to its maximum, cleaned out one of your bank accounts, piled up debts, even
committed a crime in your name - without you having any idea until police
or debt collection agencies were banging on your door?
Welcome to Identity Theft, the fastest growing, and possible hardest to
combat, crime in the US and, now that the Internet has made us all one big
happy and exploitable family, possibly the world.
In November, US federal authorities in New York announced they had arrested
three men and charged them with stealing credit card information and
draining the bank accounts of at least 30,000 people. It is believed to be
the biggest identity theft scheme so far.
With a few keystrokes, these men essentially picked the pockets of tens of
thousands of Americans, taking their identities, stealing their money and
swiping their security.
According to US authorities, it was an inside job, allegedly facilitated by
Philip Cummings, an employee of Teledata Communications. The Long Island
software company provides banks with computerised access to credit
information databases.
Mr Cummings is accused of selling, at $US30 a pop, passwords and codes -
forwarded to at least 20 people - for downloading consumer credit reports.
The scam netted at least $US2.7 million ($A4.81 million), although the
nine-month investigation is still at its early stages and that figure could
swell dramatically. Many suspect this crime is the tip of an iceberg.
The FBI has called for greater international cooperation to combat identity
theft. Certainly, police forces across the US have been overwhelmed by the
phenomenon, which surfaced in the early 1990s.
What is truly scary about identity theft is how easy it is. At the simplest
level opportunistic thieves pilfer mail boxes - sometimes brazenly trailing
postal workers - and rubbish bins, searching for bank and credit card
details, and other information.
The financial costs of identity theft are difficult to quantify. But one
thing is certain - they are invariably passed on to consumers.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the total cost of identity theft wasn't
billions of dollars, if you consider all the variants of this crime," says
the agent in charge of cyber crimes at the FBI Los Angeles office, Frank
Harrill.
Initially, identity theft was not even recognised as a crime in the US - it
is now a federal crime and most states have laws - making it a Kafkaesque
experience for victims who had to prove someone else was responsible for
the outlandish bills charged to their name.
Even now, victims have to resuscitate their credit ratings, sometimes as
new bills flood in.
The worst cases have involved people whose identities were stolen by career
criminals who then committed serious crimes.
Linda Foley, the founder of the Identity Theft Resource Centre, which helps
victims, realised her identity had been stolen when her credit company
phoned to verify a change of address.
"They wanted to know about my new post office box," she says. "Except that
I didn't have one."
She later learned she had been betrayed by her employer, to whom Ms Foley
had given her social security number, the US equivalent of a personal
identification number.
Besides spending hundreds of hours unravelling the financial scam and
reviving her credit rating , Ms Foley had to grapple with the emotional
stress of betrayal and lingering paranoia.
Ms Foley is scathing of US businesses that, for example, send out billions
of unsolicited, pre-approved credit card offers each year. No wonder the
sale of home paper shredders has skyrocketed.
Once thieves acquire a name, an address, a phone number or, best, a social
security number, they can construct a fake identity and acquire bogus
drivers' licences, credit cards, and bank accounts. Some thieves assume
multiple identities, dumping them when credit dries up. Today, identity
theft takes myriad forms. Modern thieves are more likely to pick through
massive digitalised databases, often accessed by hackers using the Internet.
"Credit card databases are really coin of the realm now within the hacker
communities," says Mr Harrill. "Although that isn't so hard on individuals
- it isn't the assumption of an individual's total identity - it's still
identity theft. There are millions of compromised credit card accounts."
This trend has made identity theft a supranational crime.
"Somebody in Latvia might be using stolen identities to order shipments of
computers, for example," says Ronald Iden, of the FBI Los Angeles office.
"Or criminal groups anywhere outside this country can now loot bank and
credit accounts here. Or, for that matter, anywhere."
There also is growing concern that terrorists are using identity theft to
launder money to raise funds.
What to do? Consumers should check their credit reports at least once a
year, scrutinise bank and credit card statements, be careful to whom they
give personal information (especially on the Internet) and arrange for mail
to be collected if they go on holiday. Yet even this may not be enough.
"It is possible to do everything right and still become a victim," says Mr
Harrill.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/30/1041196594881.html