By Karen Barney, communications coordinator, Identity Theft Resource Center Ah, the pleasure of travel; the much-needed vacation time for escape and recreation.  Unfortunately, it is also a prime time for identity thieves to take advantage of your relaxed defenses against identity theft. While you may have your own personal checklist for travel, passport, tickets, itinerary, [...]

Did you know that identity thieves are now shifting the focus of their attacks to instant messaging because it is seen as a largely unprotected channel of communication?  Instant messaging operates on various peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and spawns an irresistible temptation for identity thieves to maliciously steal your identity.  People who use instant messaging as [...]

(and not the ancient Greek god) The other day I was on my cell phone talking to one of my friends while we were both logged into our Facebook accounts.  We were laughing at some of the humorous News Feeds our friends were posting when all of a sudden my friend told me to hold [...]

What you can do to prevent it Medical identity thieves use stolen health-care records or medical insurance information in a number of insidious ways. Criminals use the information to receive hospital treatment, to obtain prescription drugs or to receive discounted doctor’s visits.  Furthermore, medical identity thieves use the information to file phony insurance claims to [...]

What you can do to clean up the mess There are a number of consequences for victims of medical identity theft. Unpaid medical bills will go into collections, affect credit history, and can take months or years to clean up.  Fraudulently altered health-care  records may result in an incorrect treatment or diagnosis.  If you happen [...]

What it can do to you? It is in your best interest to find out if you may be a victim of medical identity theft. You may think that it could never happen to you, however when I worked as a ProtectMyID.com Fraud Resolution Agent, I would hear our members who were victimized by this [...]

Divorce and Child Identity Theft When I used to be a ProtectMyID.com Fraud Resolution Agent I would hear devastating stories of how identity theft affects the children involved in divorce, as was the case with one ProtectMyID.com member I helped.  The member found out her soon to be ex-husband used their child’s Social Security number [...]

Koobface Scams Recently, a cousin of mine texted me that she received a message from a friend through her Facebook account notifying her of a YouTube video she and I were in.  This was a concern to me because I would never post a video of myself on YouTube, and not only that, I’d never [...]

The purpose of this blog series is to educate people about the ways that identities are stolen without revealing confidential information or names of the people who have been affected. Keep in mind, these stories are true (although I have omitted specific details for our members’ protection) and are described by real Fraud Resolution Agents. [...]