Identity theft remains a serious threat

News about the economy is bleak. People are losing jobs, homes and their savings. How could things get any worse?

Increases in identity theft.

The financial crisis is prompting an increase in trickery to steal from Internet users, according to Dave Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group. New scams are being used “to scare consumers into entering their usernames and passwords into sites that mimic those of well-known distressed financial institutions,” he said. His organization released a report on the problem last month.

This month, the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center said in its annual report that breaches of government, corporate and other organizations’ computer systems increased 47 percent from 2007 to 2008.

Sometimes the thefts are inside jobs. This month, a woman from Fort Washington, Md., was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for stealing names, dates of birth, social security numbers and other identifying information from individuals while she worked at two medical facilities.

Not all identify theft depends on high-tech means. Last week, a Baltimore man was sentenced to 11 years and two months in prison for his role in a scheme to steal checks from mailboxes. He and accomplices would take checks, credit cards, and identifying information like driver’s licenses and social security cards from mailboxes while inserting advertising fliers. With the stolen information they’d create fake IDs to use in cashing the stolen checks.

And just this morning, a man was sentenced in Greenbelt to a year and 10 months in prison for, along with three conspirators, using fake Maryland driver’s licenses to withdraw money from bank accounts.

Exhibit A published this and another set of tips last year for protecting yourself against ID theft. They hold up today.

Please be careful with your personal information. Don’t become a statistic in this sad trend.