metaViper

For the next five days, metaViper will focus on finding solutions and information surrounding identity theft. These posts will focus on how identity thieves steal your personal information and what you can do to protect yourself.

I was motivated to write this series after listening to a podcast of the Diane Rehm show tonight when she interviewed Frank Abagnale. To see a movie of Frank’s life as a young criminal stealing over $4 million from 1963 to 1969 (worth about $20 million now) be sure to check out Catch Me If You Can. He now focuses on educating the public on how to address identity theft.

A few tidbits I took away from the show:

• Avoid using checks. They contain too much personal information that is easily duplicated. Use credit cards instead as that puts the credit card company’s money at risk, not yours.
• Buy a credit monitoring service that provides live updates on what’s happening with your credit rating.
• Pay attention to who you’re sharing personal information with, this is a good topic to be paranoid about.

Beyond that advice, realize that all the information you put online in social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook is indexed by search engines which becomes a sort of permanent record. This information is readily available to identity thieves and it’s become common practice for employers to do some basic searches online for your name. Anyone can read about what you did at the bar last night if you write about it in the public space.

Want to see where you stand? An excellent place to discover your online reputation is Pipl. They utilize “deep web” search techniques to seek out your name wherever it may hide on the inter-web. Experimenting with a few searches here can be very enlightening. It includes phone book references, public records searches, historical references, and social networking sites.

More to come in metaViper’s five part series on identity theft!