New Jersey Life Insurance Individual identity protection Services.

The acquisition of personal identifiers is made possible through serious breaches of privacy. For consumers, this is usually due to personal naiveté about who they provide their information to, or carelessness in protecting their information from theft (e.g. vehicle break-ins and home invasions). Guardianship of personal identifiers by consumers is the most common intervention strategy recommended by the Federal Trade Commission, Canadian Phone Busters and most sites that address identity theft. Personal guardianship issues include recommendations on what consumers may do to prevent their information getting into the wrong hands.

The strongest protection against identity theft is NOT to identify at all - thereby ensuring that information cannot be reused to impersonate an individual elsewhere. As such, identify theft is often a question of too little privacy or too much identification.

For example, biometric identifiers are sometimes used as a method of identification. However, because of inherent issues (e.g. cannot be kept a secret or changed) - biometrics can create a threat of identity theft. This threat can be reduced by only using revocable or cancelable biometrics, storing them in a tamper-resistant device, never sharing them, and cryptographically combining them with a secret, revocable key.


Our Professional Resident Agent,  Dwain Ammons has been helping consumers with insurance decisions since 1986.
Call him at (888) 283-4749 for immediate help.

Identity protection by organizations.

In their May 1998 testimony before the United States Senate, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) discussed the sale of Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers by credit-raters and data miners. The FTC agreed to the industry's self-regulating principles restricting access to information on credit reports.[1] According the industry, the restrictions vary according to the category of customer. Credit-rating services gather and disclosure personal and credit information to a wide business client base.

Governments, in registering sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations do not make an effort to determine if the officers listed in the Articles of Incorporation are who they say they are, potentially allowing criminals access to personal information through credit-rating and data mining services. Other poor corporate diligence standards include:

a failure to shred confidential information before throwing it into dumpsters
the brokerage of personal information to other businesses without ensuring that the purchaser maintains adequate security controls
the theft of laptop computers being carried off-site containing vast amounts of personal information.
If corporate or government organizations do not protect consumer privacy, client confidentiality and political privacy, the acquisition of personal identifiers to commit unlawful acts will continue to be a prime target for criminals.[
 

The false credentials.
The combination of multiple high-security features, biometrics, and well-trained document inspectors with technical assistance can be very effective at preventing forgery. However, all of these security techniques can be rendered ineffective if the ID document is a "genuine fake", that is, a genuine document issued under false pretences.

One way of doing this is to present the document issuing authority with false credentials, which they will then endorse by issuing a new document. In this way, false identities and credentials can be "bootstrapped" over a period of time.

Another simpler way of generating false credentials is to suborn one of the officials involved the document issuing process. This may also be combined with the bootstrapping process above to mount complex attacks.

Corruption in the document-issuing process is hard to counter, since as the value of a credential increases, the economic incentives for corruption also increase. This is particularly true in the case of ID cards which combine many functions in one document, and for documents which are issued in large numbers, thus requiring many thousands of people to have authorizing powers.

Another systemic attack is to inject false information into the official database, in such a way that the database will recognize fake cards as being real.
 
Legal response to identity theft in the USA
  • The increase in crimes of identity theft lead to the drafting of the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. In 1998, The Federal Trade Commission appeared before the United States Senate. The FTC discussed crimes which exploit consumer credit to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, lines-of-credit fraud, credit card fraud, commodities and services frauds. The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act (2003)[ITADA] amended the U.S. Code, s. 1028: "Fraud related to activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information". The Code now makes possession of any "means of identification" to "knowingly transfer, possess, or use without lawful authority" a federal crime, alongside unlawful possession of identification documents.

    The Act also provides the Federal Trade Commission with authority to track the number of incidents and the dollar value of losses. There figures relate mainly to consumer financial crimes and not the broader range of all identification-based crimes. Punishments for the unlawful use of a "means of identification" were strengthened in s.1028a, allowing for a consecutive sentence under specific conditions of a felony violation defined in s. 1028c.

    If used to commit another crime in the commission of identity theft in the United States (if charged federally) include:

    Class B Felony: 6-20 years in Jail and a fine up to $10,000
    Class C Felony: 2-8 years in Jail and a fine up to $10,000
    If charges are brought by state or local law enforcement agencies, different penalties apply depending on the state.

     
  • Spread and impact of identity theives.

    Surveys in the USA from 2003 to 2006 showed a decrease in the total number of victims but an increase in the total value of identity fraud to US$56.6 billion in 2006. The average fraud per person rose from $5,249 in 2003 to $6,383 in 2006.

    The 2003 survey from the Identity Theft Resource Center found that :
    Only 15% of victims find out about the theft through proactive action taken by a business
    The average time spent by victims resolving the problem is about 40 hours
    73% of respondents indicated the crime involved the thief acquiring a credit card
    The emotional impact is similar to that of victims of violent crimes
     
Details and important additional information to know.
  • Identity document forgery.
     Identity document forgery is the process by which identity documents issued by governing bodies are copied and/or modified by persons not authorized to create such documents or engage in such modifications, for the purpose of deceiving those who would view the documents about the identity or status of the bearer. The term also encompasses the activity of acquiring identity documents from governing bodies by falsifying the required supporting documentation in order to create the desired identity.

    Identity documents differ from other credentials in that they are intended only to be usable by the person holding the card. Unlike other credentials, they may be used to restrict the activities of the holder as well as to expand them.

    Documents that have been forged in this way include driver's licenses (which historically have been forged or altered to conceal the fact that persons desiring to consume alcohol are under the legal drinking age), birth certificates and Social Security cards (likely used in identity theft schemes, or to defraud the government), and passports (used to evade restrictions on entry into a particular country).

    Such falsified documents can be used for identity theft, age deception, illegal immigration, and organized crime.