video: LEGAL MATTERS: It’s This Easy To Steal Your Identity

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

John T. Longo, GoLocalWorcester Legal Contributor

What would you think if one day your mailman told you he received the change of address form you filed and he wished you well in Florida - even though you had not filed any such form and you were not moving to Florida? My client in Rhode Island thought it must have been a computer mistake.

How about if a few days later he delivered a coupon book from Sun Trust Bank for you to use with your new car loan - even though you had not bought a car? At that point, my client realized he was the victim of identity theft.

We Are All Easy Marks

The price of something generally correlates to how hard it is to get it; so tuna is cheap but Alaska King Crab is expensive. To understand how easy it is for someone to steal your identity, keep that principal in mind and consider what thieves pay for your financial information:

• Your Social Security Number: $45 +$5 for your date of birth.

• Your Credit Card Numbers: $1.15 for your Discover card, $2.60 for your Visa, $2.80 for your American Express, and $3.30 for your MasterCard.

The prices fluctuate wildly but the bottom line is, to thieves, your financial life has a Wal-Mart price tag, not a Tiffany’s.

Once the thieves have a little information, they can mine the internet for the other details they may need to get past those pesky security questions – like what city was your high school in, and what is the name of your oldest nephew – and get into your bank accounts.

This 3-minute video will give you an idea how easy it is for them.

 

Protect Yourself

The best way to protect yourself from identity theft is to keep an eye on your credit reports. There are three major credit bureaus and you can get one copy of your credit report from each bureau every year. So every four months you can visit www.annualcreditreport.com and request a different one.

Do not use freecreditreport.com because that is a pay site pushing overpriced credit monitoring services and why would you want to do business with a company (Experian) sleazy enough to use a name like that to lure you into buying their product? In fact, most credit monitoring services are not worth the money.

Don’t Expect Much Help

If you have already been victimized, this Federal Trade Commission web site will explain what to do.

Unfortunately, despite the prevalence of identity theft you will have a hard time convincing the lenders that got duped that you really do not owe them money. In my client’s case, he contacted Sun Trust right away, filed a police report and did everything the bank asked. He did not hear from them again so he thought it was taken care of. But a few years later they sued him in Georgia. He contacted Sun Trust again, sent the paperwork again, and did not hear from them for more than a year so he again thought it was resolved. But in January of this year they sued him in Rhode Island.

We are countersuing the bank for malicious prosecution.

John Longo is a consumer rights attorney practicing law in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He represents consumers who have disputes with businesses, employees cheated out of their wages or overtime, car buyers stuck with Lemons, and people in need of bankruptcy protection. He is a member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, and the Rhode Island Association for Justice.

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