Identity theft (Proposal)
After a wonderful evening out on the town, my wife and I arrived home. I began empting contents of my pockets onto the dresser. Where is my wallet? I thought to myself. “Breanna” I called out to my wife. “Is my wallet in your purse?
“No, I don’t see it in here. She said, “It’s not in your pockets?”
“No.” I replied. Franticly searching, grabbing my keys I headed outside to search through my car. Coming up empty handed I ran back into the houses and told Breanna that I was going to go back to the restaurant to see if I had left it there. Arriving to the restaurant I asked the hostess if anyone had lost or left a wallet there. “I don’t know,” she told me in a sassy tone, “I guess I can go ask the manager”
“Thank you” I grumbled. She obviously didn’t have any idea the terror I was feeling inside. She came back with a light brown wallet and asked if it was mine. It was. I was surprised and relieved to find everything was still inside, my money, cards, and all the pictures. Thanking her, I left. A feeling of relief sank into me. Driving home I felt things had worked out.
Later that week while I paid my bills I noticed several large purchases that had been made. Knowing that my wife had not made them I called my bank, asking about the unexpected purchases that had been made. Katie, the lady on the phone, informed me the charges had been made is 5 different states on the east coast. What the crap! I thought. “I have never been to any of those places” I explained to her. “Well sir you have been a victim of identity theft” said Katie.
Although we may not personally know someone that has had their identity stolen, stories like the one above do happen. Well what exactly is identity theft you may be wondering? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines it as; “When someone uses your personally identifying information, like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.” Well that would suck, you might think. Why do I need to worry? The truth is that identity theft can really screw up your life. It could destroy your credit. You bank account could be drained. Even causing problems with the law, imagine that the thief got arrested and gave your personal information to the police instead of his. You could have warrants out for your arrest and not even know it. The person that takes your identity becomes you and they take over your life. You will have a hard time getting everything back. You could lose everything.
According to www.google.com/publicdata 307,006,550 people live in the United States. The FTC estimates that 9 million people have their identity stolen every year. (Prosch, 2009) That may only be 3% of the population but if that were to happen every year for 5 years that 3% quickly jumps to 15%. In terms of places that would be roughly 3 times the population of Utah having their identities stolen. These numbers shows that this is a very common problem. In 33 years everyone in the States could have their identities stolen once. WOW!
Many questions come to mind when we think about identity theft. How does identity theft happen? How does someone steal my identity? How do I find out if my identity has been stolen? What do I do to fix it? How long will this last? What can I do to protect myself or to fight against it? The most important, in my mind, would be how do I prevent it? I will cover most of these in my research paper. However one that I find interesting is how does someone steal my identity? There is a large number of ways someone could obtain your identity. The FTC lists six of the most common. Dumpster Diving- if you don’t shred or burn your important documents they can be taken. Skimming- using a small storage device, sometimes as small as a man’s wallet, they can copy the info from you debit and credit cards. Phishing- the use of junk or spam mail that imitates a banks website or others, used to trick you into revealing personal information. Changing your address- then divert you bills to another address, if you don’t see the statements you might not suspect anything is happening. Old-Fashioned stealing- plain and simple, they take your wallet or purses, or even you mail, they could even bribe employees who have access to these things. The last one is Pretexting- they use false pretenses to get you info from companies and institutions.
When it comes to protection I feel that prevention is the best way. You would have already won the battle if is never happens to you. Of the seven questions listed above I will cover four of them but my primary focus will be the prevention of identity theft. I will use EBSCO Host as my primary source of information, searching for papers that contain full text and are peer reviewed. This will insure accurate and scholarly information. I also plan on using the website www.ftc.com this is the official site of the Federal Trade Commission.
Identity theft is real and can be a serious problem. Your life could be left in shambles. However, if we are very careful how we dispose of personal information, and use our credit, and debit cards we can protect ourselves better from the vultures that are waiting to feed on us.
Referenses
Prosch, Marilyn. (2009). Preventing identity theft throughout the data life cycle. Journal of Accountancy, 207(1), 58-62.
About identity theft. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/consumers/about-identity-theft.html#Howcanyoufindoutifyouridentitywasstolen
