Security: Staying safe from identity theft
My identity was stolen in 2013, and it took me years to undo the damage, said Drew Armstrong in Bloomberg Businessweek. A man named Marlen Manukyan somehow got access to my name and Social Security number and “went from bank to bank over three days in August that year setting up accounts at TD Bank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.” When he sold an RV over Craigslist for $39,960 and never delivered the vehicle, the police caught on. Still, for the next six years, I would get interrogated and searched anytime I tried to board a plane. My credit rating was destroyed; I was denied a new credit card and struggled to get a mortgage. Since then, “breach after breach has exposed the vulnerability of the systems that guard the private information we casually hand over,” repeating my nightmare for others. “In fairness to thieves, we’ve made this very easy.” So much data has been exposed that there is probably “an undersupply of willing criminals.” But it should be harder to get a new credit card than to log in to Gmail.
It’s time to do away with the Social Security number, said Patrick Lucas Austin in Time. It was created to track social benefits, and up until the 1970s, the card actually said “not for identification.” But the single identifier became convenient when companies began handling information with computers. Now “it’s a little like having a Facebook password that we can’t change even if we know somebody else has it.” Better methods of identification include biometrics, such as thumbprints or iris scanners, said James Wellemeyer in MarketWatch.com. One company is even working on technology that can identify you by your heartbeat. “But not everyone may want to give their heartbeat to their bank, and for good reason.” The best alternative might be “real-time” personal information: A bank could ask for the last number you called on your phone or the last purchase you made—information that is harder to steal because it’s constantly changing.
It’s important to stay vigilant, said David Murphy in Lifehacker .com. The website HaveIBeenPwned.com “will let you know if, or when, your email address is involved in a hack” if you sign up for their notifications. The easiest thing to do? Sign up for credit monitoring, said Melanie Lockert in BusinessInsider.com. It’s free on sites such as CreditKarma.com, and “last year, it actually helped me stop an insurance identity theft with a simple alert.” After an alert notified me that a credit card account at Old Navy had been opened in my name, I was able to call the issuer and cancel the card before the identity thief could make any charges.