When Ms Linda Foley joined a San Diego-based magazine in 1997 as a sales person, her employer insisted on seeing her driver's licence. She just wanted to make sure her new employee could drive a car, she claimed.
Three months later, Ms Foley was astonished when an agent at Citibank Visa, her credit card issuer, called to ask if she had recently moved house. She was even more startled when the agent told her the new address to which her bills were going. It was her employer's home. Ms Foley soon discovered that her employer had used information from her driver's licence to access her credit card and make purchases in her name.
She had also used Ms Foley's name to start a mobile phone line and open three new credit card accounts. Ms Foley was a typical victim of "identity theft", a crime that is rapidly spreading, but is still largely ignored in the US. Like her, most victims have no idea their identity has been stolen until several months have passed - by which time grave damage has often been done to their credit history and financial stability. Identity theft can take hundreds of different forms, and is limited only by the thief's ingenuity. It is most commonly associated with financial fraud - the US Treasury department estimates that identity theft causes losses of up to $3 billion (€3.46 billion) each year from credit card fraud alone. But the crime can also take more serious forms: people who steal your identity can also allow you to be arrested for their crimes.
At the root of the problem is the ease with which a person's social security number can be stolen. The number is of paramount importance to a US citizen: the federal government uses it as taxpayer identification, individual states use it on drivers' licences, and most banks identify customers with it.
Once a thief discovers a victim's social security number, he can very easily operate as an "alter ego", opening bank accounts, applying for credit cards and car loans, and quickly draining victims of their money. How do thieves steal their victims' social security number? In many cases, such as Ms Foley's, the thief is a friend or business associate. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that 60 per cent of callers to its identity theft hotline appeared to have some knowledge of the criminals.
Work places, which sometimes have lax security protecting their employees' vital financial data, are another common site of theft. The internet has also contributed to problems. Ms Givens notes that a loophole in federal law allows any website to list a person's social security number. She points to a site called Fastbreakbail.com, which boasts: "You Supply the Name & Address, We Provide the Social Security Number". The charge is just $25.
Victims such as Mr Hannon also direct their anger at America's three largest credit reporting agencies for their failure to protect consumers.
