By Kate E. Salute
"Yep, that's a scam," said Reed. "How much did you win? Over a million Euro? Wow, you're a lucky one."
While Reed jokes because he is knowledgeable about all types of identity theft scams and would not be taken by one, millions of people each year don't think that these e-mails are a laughing matter, unless they are laughing all the way to the bank. "There are 10 million victims of identity theft nationally each year," said Reed. "Forty-eight million [dollars] in corporate losses are due to identity theft, and $5 million in personal financial losses."
Detective Mike Bitsko of the Nassau County Police Department reported 2,409 cases of identity theft in the county for the 2005 year upto Nov. 4 which is up from the previous year's 2,117 cases of reported identity theft.
Aside from e-mails claiming that you've won something you haven't applied for, Internet scams run the gamut from unsecured Web sites to phone calls to people stealing your mail and rummaging through your garbage. "You may say, I'm not famous, why would anyone want to go through my garbage? There's nothing valuable in there," Reed said. "That's where you would be wrong."
All of the pre-approved credit card applications that people receive and throw away, if they are not torn up or shredded, are opportunities for someone to open a credit card in your name. All they have to do is change the address, explained Reed. "Some people actually pay poor people to go through garbage and retrieve these things. It usually pays anywhere from $30 to $100."
Aside from shredding credit card offers before discarding them, Reed urges people to collect their mail in a timely fashion. "Forty-one percent of all ID theft is from people stealing your mail," he said. "People go door to door after the mailman delivers your mail and they take the bills and the credit card statements. They then change the address to their own, though they keep the name the same. I tell people to be vigilant and diligent. Vigilant in knowing that they should be getting their credit card bills and statements at a certain time of the month. The companies send out these statements on a certain day every month, so if you are not getting it, you should make a phone call to the credit-issuing agent. Because if you are not getting it, someone else may be getting it and doing bad things."
Often people worry that they are more likely to be victims of identity theft when they shop over the Internet, but there is an easy way to make sure you have a safe Web shopping experience. "If you are purchasing over the Internet, you have to make sure you are on a secure site and doing business with a reputable company," said Reed. "The best way to find out if you are protected, if your firewalls are protecting you, is to look up at the address where the 'www' is, and up there you should have 'HTTPS.' The S is very important - it stands for 'secure site.'"
Other ways people can protect themselves from identity theft include putting alphanumeric codes on bank and credit card accounts. "They are harder to crack," Reed said.
"I also suggest that people put a fraud alert on their accounts so that the consumer will be contacted prior to any additional accounts being opened, and that's free, and all institutions do that.
"Request credit reports at least once a year," Reed continued, "and know that we have one free credit report from each of the credit institutions once a year. So you can actually check it for free three times a year."
Lastly, Reed said, "If you are a victim, you need to call the police department and file a report, because you have to file a claim to prove that you are a victim. And you have to contact the Federal Trade Commission at 1-877-IDTHEFT, and they will ask you to sign an affidavit."
Reed warned, "If the ID theft has been going on for several months, it will take up to 175 hours of your time proving that all of the charges that were made weren't made by you. You have to prove that you weren't in that place at that time or that it wouldn't have been possible for you to make that purchase. And [it may take] up to two years to clean up your financial image."
