Expect More Identity Theft in 08

Posted by: Sophie H. | Jan 04,2008


I read Gene’s post today about a new method of identity theft with some alarm, so I decided to do more research.  I came upon this article, which is probably not going to make you rest any easier in regards to identity theft.  Hopefully it will make you take the problem more seriously.  The headline says it all: Analysts expect more data breaches in '08.

I expect there to be a fair number of people out there who still think, “Oh, that won’t happen to me.”  Most people don’t believe that bad things can happen to them until they actually happen.  Even if you’re entirely vigilant about fighting identity theft, you can’t control everything.  Did you know that you can download malicious code to your computer just by visiting a website.  That’s right, it’s not just a case of hitting “download,” or clicking an email link, just surfing the web can lead to a virus or spyware.  You can shred all relevant documents, but it’s pretty hard to keep from sniffing out these types of sites, aside from eschewing the Internet altogether, which is sort of like eschewing the mail.  

Just look at these figures for 2007: “9 million records reported compromised in the United States through Dec. 18. That's a nearly fourfold increase from the nearly 20 million records reported in all of 2006. Another group, Attrition.org, estimates more than 162 million records compromised through Dec. 21.”  2008 projects to be even worse, even as people are more aware of the problem with identity theft.  It’s harder to sucker a rube into giving over a Social Security number, but there are also a lot more ways to gain access.  Identity thieves are getting a lot more tech-savvy and anti-theft software isn’t always keeping pace.  

For this reason, I’d recommend a credit monitoring service, one which guarantees that you will not be hit with fraud.  By all means, be vigilant on your own, but with these many records and more stolen every year, fighting identity theft isn’t just a one-person operation.  

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