Area ID theft complaints up 43 percent in 2008

When Dr. Brian Parker returned to Springfield last year after more than two decades living in Australia, he needed to take care of several issues, from starting his own office to obtaining health insurance.

Late last year, several faxes advertising affordable health insurance were sent to his practice, Nixa Main Street Chiropractic, and after doing what he thought was adequate research, Parker called one of the companies. He provided them with personal information for himself and his wife, along with a credit card number to pay the one-time, $144 application fee. The required information, he said, all seemed reasonable for obtaining health insurance.

But when Parker called back later to check for additional information, the company's number had been disconnected.

"I dialed about four times, and then waited until the next day and tried again," he said. "I'm thinking, 'They've got our damn Social Security numbers, our birthdates, all this personal information.' I was really worried about identity theft.'"

Growing concern

Parker is not alone. As technology advances - and the economy retreats - more people are becoming victims of identity theft.

The Springfield metropolitan statistical area reported 1,391 cases of identity theft in 2008, up 43 percent from 2007, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

The upward trend in Springfield is even more pronounced than the continued increase in identity theft across the state and nationwide. There were nearly 314,000 cases of identity theft reported nationwide in 2008, up 21 percent from 2007, while Missouri reported 4,433 cases, up 12 percent.

Denise Richardson, a Florida-based independent consumer advocate and identity theft education specialist, said the continued climb in ID theft numbers isn't surprising. She said that while new technology does make ID theft easier, the bigger culprit is the recession.

"People are desperate. I think some people may not be prone to go out and rob a bank, but they'd steal information. Desperate people do desperate things," said Richardson, who also offers expertise for Arizona-based ID theft prevention company LifeLock. "Identity theft is a relatively low-risk crime, but it's a high-reward crime."

According to Curt Gaddis, local group benefits specialist with Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc., identity thieves are also getting more bold, in part because consumers don't have the proper "culture of security."

"People don't know about things like 'shoulder surfing,'" Gaddis said. "You're at Wal-Mart standing in line and someone behind you has a cell-phone camera. You get your credit card out and are holding it in your hand, and someone clicks a picture of it. You're now a victim."

It was that lack of knowledge that ended up working against Parker, who used Gaddis' prepaid legal services, including the company's identity monitoring services, and was able to take action before he lost any money.

Parker admitted he probably wasn't as streetwise as he might have been because he had been out of the country for so many years.

"The best advice I can give is to stay informed," he said.

"Don't think you know what identity theft is and that you can handle it. This is a real legal issue - you could have a hospital or a bank coming after you saying you owe money. By being well-informed, that makes a big difference."

Risks and ramifications

The numbers from the Federal Trade Commission - released in late March - demonstrate the low risk of perpetrators being caught or even pursued. The commission said 65 percent of ID theft victims in 2008 didn't report the crimes to police, although they may have notified their financial institutions or the FTC.

Another 27 percent notified the police and filed a report. And 6 percent reported the crime to police - likely via an initial phone call - and didn't follow up by filing a police report.

Gaddis said the main reason for the low reporting rate is that most people don't realize they're vulnerable until after a breach has occurred, especially since identity theft occurs in five areas: financial records, Social Security information, medical records, criminal activity and driver's license theft.

"People think it's only financial, but that's only about 26.5 percent of the problem," Gaddis said. "It's blissful ignorance - people don't realize that they're vulnerable in these areas."

The risks are especially troubling, Gaddis said, in the medical information arena, where identity thieves can charge the costs of medical procedures to victims or even change vital information, such as blood type and medication allergies.

The problem is exacerbated, Gaddis added, by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Affordability Act. HIPAA is supposed to make it harder for anyone other than the patient to get personal medical information, but Gaddis said it can also create barriers for ID theft victims to clear their name - the real patient can't change their information because they can't convince medical record-keepers that they are who they say they are.

"In most of these areas, there are no set laws out there (to protect) identity theft victims," Gaddis said.

The financial ramifications of identity theft can be staggering - the FTC estimates the average victim sustains $18,000 in fraudulent charges. While victims may not be held liable for fraudulent charges, FTC data shows that they'll still spend an average of $1,200 and 175 hours to set the record straight.

Reducing the risks

Even with the growing number of identity theft cases and the increasing ease with which thieves can access valuable personal information, Richardson said there are certain steps that can reduce vulnerability.

The first two protections relate to personal credit: fraud alerts and credit freezes.

A fraud alert is a red flag individuals can put on their credit reports telling the three major credit bureaus - Experian, TransUnion and Equifax - to contact them any time someone requests credit in their names to verify the validity of the request. A credit freeze is just that - no new credit will be issued on the account unless the account holder unfreezes it.

Both Gaddis and Richardson, however, note that preventing identity theft is nearly impossible because of the number of companies that have people's personal information for everything from credit cards to insurance coverage.

For example, the Identity Theft Resource Center - a national nonprofit agency that tracks identity theft information - reported 656 confirmed cases of company data breaches in 2008, affecting more than 35 million personal records.

"I liken it to anything else you don't have control over, like the weather," Richardson said.

"I live in south Florida, so we are prone to hurricanes. Every year, the season comes around, and we buy up bottled water and canned goods. We can't control it, and we can't be sure the worst isn't going to happen, so we have to prepare for it."

Gaddis said the best plan of attack is to have legal representation, so that when identity theft strikes, someone is there to offer guidance.

"Identity theft is first and foremost a legal problem. You can't prevent it; it's how fast you catch it," Gaddis said. "Monitoring it isn't enough - you have to be able to be proactive on the legal side."[[In-content Ad]]