NEWS
More than 21 million UK households are in the firing line of identity fraud as Britons continue to throw away documents that could be useful to rubbish-rummaging fraudsters.
This equates to 97 per cent of households chucking away materials containing full name, title, sex, address and postcode details, research conducted by business advisor Waste Works has revealed.
Nearly a third (30 per cent) of people had thrown away material with details of a whole credit or debit card number and nearly half (48 per cent) chucked away everything a fraudster needs in order to steal a person's ID, according to the research.
Personal IDs are not only available from bins. Documents taken during burglaries and from wallets, and from post being snatched from doorsteps - or after people forget to redirect mail - are all ways fraudsters can obtain personal details, research from Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International found.
Impersonating the dead is another method used by fraudsters, including the misuse of birth certificates.
And lest we forget the digital threats out there - a report out today shows phishing remains a serious problem, with RSA Security reporting a 48 per cent increase in the number of attacks over the past four months.
While overall numbers have increased, the banks being targeted remain static - leading RSA to suggest the fraudsters are currently enjoying success with the brands they are spoofing.
Stolen identities, whether gained through stealing from bins or through phishing can be used to apply for bank accounts, credit cards and mobile phone contracts as well as identification documents such as passports.
These findings coincide with the launch of the National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, which seeks to stop the complacent attitude found in the UK.
Comments
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1. anonymous
OK..so we should all buy shredders (makes note to buy shares in shredder manufacturers) and stop responding to phishing attempts. That still won't solve the problem.
The authorities and suppliers also need to take action. I can't see any way of concealing an address (even if all post is shredded, a rubbish-rummager will be at the premises so it won't be too onerous to look at the house number on the wall, note the name of the street, remember which city they are in and easily check the postcode). However, it would be possible for those sending mail to omit birth dates and full card numbers.
It's concerned me for some time that credit card and bank statements include full account numbers. I have opted to stop receiving bank statements by post and now access them online, which is more secure. However, when I tried to do the same thing with credit card statements, the credit card company said it was not possible since it was a legal requirement that statements be sent by post. They could still omit the full card number, however.
2. Richard
What's suddenly made such docs valuable?
The real issue is: Why are these documents valuable to thieves?
The governments and its FSA have introduced crazy regulations which force banks to rely on these documents.
Lazy, acquisitive banks, credit card companies and lenders take these dodgy documents at face value without doing proper checks.
The answer is to make these documents worthless to crooks!
3. anonymous
This is poor security practice not identity theft.
You don't need to go through my bin to get my address, you can look it up in the phone book. You can get my date of birth in a dozen ways. Its not dificult to get my mother's maiden name and Friends Reunited has the name of my school. None of this is secure information and the country would grind to a halt if it were made so.
People of the UK unite and discard your shredder, instead force financial institutions to use effective security. Has anyone tried to get a car number plate recently? That's security!
The easy credit culture makes it ever simpler to make fraudulent applications and misuse information like credit card numbers. Lets get back to proper financial management.
4. anonymous
Please, will someone in the executive arm of the UK government make this a specific crime and target it with a minimum tariff.
Its not like you can stumble into doing this activity. There should be NO relief from doing this crime.
Send a clear signal to all those that are looking to do steal - Is material gain worth 15 years of your life? You will be caught eventually.
To long?... how many years do people work... if someone stole 20 years of savings from you with no way of getting it back because the banks insurance wont cover the loss.
There has to be a response to this new threat from the government. And no they should not get out early either.
Im more scared of someone hacking my online accounts than I am of bombs on trains or planes.
Come on government, do your job protect us, you cant do it by sending troops abroad, you can by instructing the judges to set a tariff for identity theft.
...Question, if the identity is stolen from the government and someone uses it, who is culpable?
If the government maintains IDs creates them for all time, what happens to covert aliases... if that function exists for goverment how can it ensure it cant happen as a security breach?
5. Is it just me?
Bins?
Frankly, I worry about the companies who make my details available to their demotivated, low paid staff.
Back in the real world, ID thieves steal or buy databases, not bin bags.
I suspect the rise in ID theft mirrors the rise in overseas outsourcing of call/data centres. And, to a lesser extent, the rise in internet shopping with people passing details over a 'secure link' to an unknown company. If my ID ever gets stolen, I doubt the thief will get it from my bin.
6. Peter Dorrington, Head of Industry Marketing Strategy, SAS UK
These worrying statistics confirm that the public is still not doing enough to protect itself from fraudsters. There is a concerning lack of cultural awareness which is opening the avenues further for the criminal community to steal identity and this needs to be addressed.
Some would argue that businesses are diluting messages of preventative measures to consumers by continuing to send out personal information in mass mailings. However, the responsibility does not lie solely with industry. A combination of education and vigilance on behalf of both the organisation and consumer is the best defense against identity theft. It is imperative that we all as individuals actively educate ourselves and know how to protect our personal information in the best way possible.
Perhaps even more worrying is the lack of a serious discussion about how best to deal with data harvesting – where an employee accesses the 1,000s of personal records routinely stored in corporate or government systems. This growing crime is beyond the individual’s ability to prevent and we need to be much more proactive if this is not to reach epidemic proportions.
7. Alastair Warren
I had a colleague who had a debt collection Co. pursue his wife for a mobile phone bill, after someone had used mail sent to their previous address to get a mobile phone contract.
So yes, big business is to blame for too readily giving out credit with woeful checks on the authenticity of those they give credit to.
It was also reported on Radio 4 that the Govt. has refused to open up the register of deaths to the financial sector who wanted the information to stop those intent on using the identities of the deceased to commit fraud.
Such a decision by our Govt. is assisting those committing these crimes.
What is this Govt. good at besides spin, privatising the NHS and throwing money at IT projects that will never deliver?
8. Michael Dixon
Dear Title, Surname, was Barclays address to my wife. And, yes, a real Barclays email, not a spoof or phisher.
9. anonymous
Peter Dorrington of SAS UK says: "These worrying statistics confirm that the public is still not doing enough to protect itself from fraudsters".
While agreeing that individuals need to be more aware of the risks and methods of reducing those risks, I can't help feeling this is a nice 'not our problem mate' on behalf of the authorities.
Did anyone see the Watchdog investigation this week? An undercover reporter looked through the bins of several financial institutions...and came away with a nice haul ranging from a credit or loan application form (filled in with all of the applicant's details and not shredded) to lots of credit cards that had been cut into a few pieces but were easily reassembled.
The financial institutions declined to appear on the programme but a statement saying 'we take customer security seriously' was read out, with the admission that 'on this occasion there seems to have been a lapse'. I can never understand why statements like that are made. Nobody believes them; they just insult the intelligence of consumers/customers. What they're saying is that all X,000 of their branches dispose of such items properly, and the investigator just happened to stumble on the one branch where they were having one off day. Oh, sure.
As the programme pointed out, what's the point of consumers carefully disposing of 'risky' material if their banks and other financial institutions are just lobbing (often even more) sensitive material into the black sack?
10. Peter Aknai
I am with those who maintain that the problem lies mostly with financial institutions eager to please would-be borrowers, personal information has long since been readily available, and the shredder won't deter the determined identity thief. I am however wondering to what extent the Identity Card, or more precisely the creation of a biometric database could help to solve this problem. It would need co-operation from the financial sector ie they would need to reassure us that they are using the database, and informing the police if they detected any attempts to bypass it. The Government are talking about making the Card voluntary - well, if it reduced identity theft they could count me in.