ID Theft: What You Need to Know
A thief stole my credit card number. Am I a victim of identity theft?
No. Card theft is technically not the same as identity theft. Card theft occurs when an unauthorized person uses your credit card number from an existing account to make purchases. True identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information -- such as your Social Security number, birth date, mother's maiden name -- to impersonate you and apply for new credit accounts in your name. Identity thieves can also use your Social Security number to obtain work, which means that income they earn could be reported to the IRS as your income.
How do thieves get information to use my credit card or steal my identity?
Most credit card thieves still get information the old-fashioned way -- by stealing a purse or wallet, sifting through documents in a mailbox or Dumpster or skimming cards. Skimming occurs when employees in retail business or restaurants, for example, swipe credit cards twice -- once using their employer's credit card reader and a second time using their own reader. Insider theft also occurs when employees of companies or agencies that process documents containing Social Security numbers and other sensitive data steal it. A relatively new way to steal massive numbers of credit card numbers involves hacking databases, such as occurred in a recent incident involving a credit card processing company in Arizona. In that case, a thief or thieves accessed information for about 40 million credit card accounts. Identity thieves can get information the same way -- by hacking data brokers such as ChoicePoint and Lexis-Nexis -- or by obtaining Social Security numbers by sifting through public records, some of which are available online.
