Identity Theft

On a lovely Saturday afternoon in January 2008, I went out to get the mail. There was a note in there from a credit card company to confirm a change of address for us. As we did not apply for a credit card, I called the company immediately. We stopped the card but not before $6,000 of computers were ordered from HP.

That afternoon I learned a lot about identity theft.

I learned that there is a government web site that includes a form to be sent to the FTC with a checklist of things to do. By the end of the evening, we had filed the form online, contacted the credit bureaus, put a fraud alert on our accounts, set up passwords at our banks and filed a police report. We also signed up for LifeLine. It has stopped three other attempts.

During the investigation, a person from the credit card company was questioning me. He asked where I suspected my ID was stolen. The day my credit was checked was a day I was at the university hospital. I felt that it was stolen there.

The credit card company investigator said, “Hmm.” I asked, “Hmm what?”

It turns out that he had six new claims to investigate. I was number five. All of us had a connection to the university hospital.

Later, I learned that 90% of all ID theft is from hospitals and doctor’s offices. They have our Social Security numbers. Also, remember that Medicare uses Social Security numbers as their form of ID. It is in our files.

The frustration is that we know where the thieves live. We also have their phone number. We reported it all to the police. I even reported it to the security of the university hospital who asked what I wanted done? I replied for them to see who accessed my file on that specific day. That would at least narrow down the suspects.

Nothing was done. ID theft is not worth pursuing by the police. The thieves are smart enough to live in one county, order goods from another county then bill a credit card to someone in a third county. None of the counties share information or care.

When I heard that there is a push for all of our medical records to be available on computers to be accessed everywhere, I can only imagine the huge increase in the level of ID theft.