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A warning on identity fraud
March 29, 2007 | 10 Comments | Joshua Gans
I found out yesterday that my identity had been stolen. Someone had allegedly managed to obtain my Medicare card and use it for fraudulent claims. They have also opened bank accounts in my name — for what purpose I do not know. It was allegedly part of a large scamming operation and there has been an arrest made. I was given permission to let others know that this could occur.
To the credit of our authorities, apart from having to make a statement, this has not impacted on my in other ways (not yet anyway). But apparently how it may have worked was this. My name is out there — as are many academics with personal information on-line — and my CV is on line. My CV does not contain much information but it did, until half an hour ago, contain my birthdate (CVs have that). So someone could get my name and my birthdate. They could look up the phone book and get my address. Then they would call Medicare and say that they were at the doctor’s and forgot their card and could they give it over the phone, etc. And that was it.
This is all very creepy but I wanted to post about it as bloggers and academics appear to be vulnerable to this sort of thing. It is worthwhile to do an audit of what you have out there and perhaps in this day and age being in the White Pages is not a good idea. Others apparently have their home address and children’s ages and birthdates on the sites. This would make things much easier for a would be identity thief.
Comments
10 Responses to “A warning on identity fraud”
[...] Joshua Gans has been a recent victim of identity fraud. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to have suffered [...]
Consider being a new mother and writing about your joy on your blog.
Fast-forward 20 years and your children are grown. A scammer looks up your blog archives and has, for your child, a name, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name.
Oops, their identify is compromised.
In my family, there is a bit of a family tree-building effort going on. They considered publishing online to see if any distant relatives would make contact, but realised that a family tree kind of gives away the above information.
The information we use for so-called “identify verification” is increasingly being leaked out into the world.
Alas the only solution I can see is giving everyone a private-public cryptographic key pairs, but 0x10F54EBCf56FD is a bit harder to remember than “Smith”.
Hi Josh.
first I’m sorry to hear about this incident.
Have you rang up the credit reference agencies and informed them of this issue? Most identity theft cases involve people opening bank accounts and using your credit history to get loans and credit cards (on which they max out) and your credit history gets ruined. screwing you over for years at a time.
I’m quite surprised at how they managed to bypass the 100-point check on opening a bank account, but I’m guessing that this check must be optional.
The other thing I would check is australia post to confirm that your mail hasn’t been forwarded to somewhere else.
I’ve heard of scammers using this method (becoming a middleman in your mail) to get bank statements and other personal information from your address.
scary stuff.
Well that sucks – however you are legally protected from any malfeasance.
On a lighter note, a friend of mine didn’t like his birth name and preferred his chosen moniker. Over a period of several years he managed to get everything but a passport in the new name, without ever officially changing it. Drivers licence, bank accounts, Medicare, etc etc etc.
Reading through this it is scary indeed how easy it must be to steal someone’s identity. At least you found out and there was an arrest, its a better result than what often happens i am sure!
[...] i am never going to post because its about work or my idenity for obvious reasons (not only because with the right information identity theft is possible) . But its just this, sometimes something happens and i just don’t want to share it whether [...]
[...] writer, Snitch, in The Australian follows up on my identity theft post: ECONOMIST Joshua Gans, of the Melbourne Business School, has had a sobering lesson in the illicit [...]
[...] here for proof. I didn’t even know my name was shared with anyone else at all (well legitimately anyway). Of course, there is a big difference, he is “Josh” and I am [...]
[...] i am never going to post because its about work or my idenity for obvious reasons (not only because with the right information identity theft is possible) . But its just this, sometimes something happens and i just don’t want to share it whether [...]
[...] to those with email addresses at US universities), and am quite a fan. Particularly after Joshua Gans’ recent identity theft problem, there’s quite a bit of personal information that I’m happy to put on Facebook, but [...]