March 14, 2007
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NEWS: Employee-on-Employee ID Theft?Proving again that ID thieves pop up in the least expected places, a recent story may make you want to lock down your cubicle for security. A few well-publicized cases of employee ID theft by other employees have emerged, and many employers are nipping the trend in the bud by taking preventative action that would limit access to personnel files and the contained personal information, at least to new hires.
Fortune Small Business magazine did a story about the owner of a small Midwest shipping firm, who fired his receptionist after she used other employees' information to steal their identities and open credit cards in their names. Furthermore, she was using the cards to make purchases on the web and have them sent to the office's address. She kept calling out sick, and on the days when the mysterious packages came and she was not there to intercept them, the boss sent them back. One day, he got word that one of the returned packages was being held in an identity theft investigation – and that a previous package from the same address to the same "recipient" had been signed for by the secretary. Of course, that's an example of ID theft on a large scale, but, in many situations, reception and/or HR employees have unlimited access to the personal information of their coworkers – a big security risk.
Towards that end, some companies are prohibiting access to personnel files for new hires – and making sure they stay locked, which should be a given, but is often upheld. Others are removing persona, information from invoices, and/or hiring a lawyer to handle personnel cases.
This is one incident, however, where the use of paper files may make a situation less vulnerable. Thanks to the advent of "pod-slurping" – using an iPod or other mp3 device to rapidly upload a large quantity of information – it is far too easy for would-be ID thieves to enter a cubicle with an unsecured PC and steal devastating amounts of information in the time it would take the rightful owner to run for a cup of coffee. Camera phones are another liability, which is why some employers are banning them altogether from the workplace.