Q: How does someone steal your identity?
A: You only have a very limited amount of personal information. When thieves hit you, no matter how they hit you, they can mess around with your name, Social Security number, date of birth, address and your phone number. If you look at any database, that’s how they identify who you are.
When thieves do any kind of identity theft to you, they manipulate that data for their own purpose. I might be able to get your wallet and get your credit card, and that’s fraud. But if I wanted to do identity theft, like open a credit card in your name, I’d fill out an application, and I would put down your name, your Social Security number on it and then I’ll put my address, so the card would come to me as the thief. I’d put my phone number down so when the card comes I can call from that number, or when they call and have questions, they can call me.
Q: How far-reaching is identity theft?
A: There are hundreds, if not thousands, of databases that affect you, other than just your credit report. Identity theft is a much broader and more serious issue; it deals with medical, criminal and driving records, address reports, public records, employment records, thousands of things.
Q: What’s driving this? Is it the Internet?
A: I think the Internet is a more secure way of going about things. Where the real increase is coming from is security breaches. Since 2005, 150 million Americans’ information has been breached. Thieves are not going after you individually. The real issue is that you have to be careful about who has your information because they’re going to lose it. Even if you shred all your mail and don’t tell anyone anything, your credit company or your college could lose a laptop. You’re just going to be one of 10 million names that get stolen.
Q: What does ID Watchdog do?
A: We have a couple of products. The lead product is the monitoring service, basically putting an alarm system on your identity to see if anyone is trying to go in through any of the different ways they can.
We can also fix it for you and charge on a per-instance basis. We’ll get it off of whatever database it’s on. We’ll get creditors to stop calling you and help you file a proper police report and pass any information back to law enforcement to help with any investigations.
Q: What kind of ID-theft crimes don’t show up on credit reports?
A: If I get a driver’s license in your name and I get pulled over for DUI and I give your fake driver’s license instead of mine, all of a sudden you have an arrest for DUI on your record. The (thief) doesn’t have to show up for court. One of our clients had this problem, with outstanding warrants for his arrest in another state.
It’s the same thing if you go into the emergency room; they ask for insurance information. If (the thief says) they don’t have the card and gives your name for the bills, the hospital goes after you for the payment.
Q: Do people know about these databases and the deeper implications of identity theft?
A: No. And that’s part of our challenge. People are very focused on credit reports. Credit reports are an issue, but they’re one-tenth of what you should be looking at.
Q: In June, you testified in front of a congressional subcommittee about identity- theft. What did you tell them?
A: The main holy grail of stealing people’s identity is the Social Security number. In my opinion, that’s where they should focus. Your Social Security number is a bank-account number.
Everybody’s co-opted it. It was never intended for that. So if you get that one number, you have access to all these things because everyone uses the same number.
Q: You say that we’ll never be able to fully wipe out identity theft. But how do we begin to stem it?
A: If government were just to say it’s illegal for anyone other than us to use that (Social Security) number for anything – if they told business to go figure out their own identifier for their customers – 50 percent of identity theft would go away.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson.
