January 29, 2009
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News: CC ID Theft Rampant.
With the latest events of the Heartland exposure of 100 million credit card accounts being reported, we can now sense the urgency to protect ourselves as best we can. The Heartland incident is, by no means, unique. To think that just a single credit card theft this week in Highlands County, Florida resulted in over $5,000 fraudulent charges in the first hour, alerts us that we're all vulnerable at any given moment. Perhaps the worst effect is the nature of the emotional impact of credit card theft.
The realization that we've been victimized usually strikes us as we least expect; our rent check unexpectedly bounces, our credit card is declined at the counter, our credit card statement arrives all maxed out by mysterious charges placed from somewhere we've never been or even worse, our bank accounts have been drained. In other words, we don't even suspect anything until after the substantial damage is already done.
Only a few of us are lucky enough to get a call from our vigilant credit card lender who has taken the trouble to monitor and catch the activity before any further damage is done. Right now, our nation's largest consumer complaint to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is identity theft. This was already the case long before the recent Heartland incident.
As far back as 2007, around 258,000 consumer complaints (one-third of the total) were filed with the FTC over identity theft. Just last week, aproximately 100 million credit card accounts were estimated to have been compromised from Heartland, this figure being based on their average monthly throughput. We may never know how large that compromised figure really is. So, without even counting what may pan out to be the largest credit card theft in history, the latest average rate of ID theft is as high as nine million Americans every year.