Below you will find any related videos, major links, downloadable documents or other resources related to this course.

You will receive a badge in your profile for completing this course. Be sure to scroll down to the course guide at the bottom to mark this page as complete!

Video summaries

The following videos are very high-level summaries of the course information which you can use to help educate your family (feel free to share course content or access with people in your immediate family). They are very short to encourage people to watch them without becoming overwhelmed.

The mini-guide/overview of the ID Theft issue. If you want to highest level (but also quickest) summary of the issue, this is it.

What are fraud alerts, what do they really do, and why they don't work.

Monitoring, where credit companies will charge you money for what should be a free service.

Insurance plans with their various other "services" tacked on to sound legit are more marketing than effective.

The most effective and powerful defense against Credit ID Theft that there is, but that you probably haven't even heard of.

If you change how you think of privacy and start limiting the spread of your data, your risks of ID Theft and other similar problems naturally goes down.

There are consequences for broadcasting to the world that you're not at home.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

Though people like to say they they have nothing to hide, the truth is that sharing information carelessly is reckless. You might assume no one would care or go to the trouble of using your data against you, but have you ever thought about how very easily it actually is?

For ID Theft, all I need is some basic information about you to buy a TV in your name, but it's not the only thing I can do. What if I just watch your Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram posts to find out when you're not going to be home to burgle your home in peace? What if I'm just some jerk online who didn't like what you said in an argument? Using a technique known as "swatting", I could trick your local police into breaking down your door, destroying your house, and drawing weapons on you and your family (sometimes fatally).

Last December, officers shot and killed an unarmed 28-year-old man on his front doorstep after receiving a call that he’d shot his father in the head and was holding his mother and two siblings hostage. He’d done nothing of the sort. The Wichita, Kansas, resident’s fatal mistake was living at an address that a “Call of Duty” gamer had fabricated and posted online during an escalating argument with a fellow gamer.

(Quote source)

Or, if I don't want to go the criminal route, it's still quite legal to track, monitor, and collect information about you based on your Internet and financial activity. Then I can use that data to profit from your Internet searches, medical data, or fear and insecurities:

She was concerned that she might have a drinking problem, and so she went on Google and asked one of those questions, ‘How do you know if you have a drinking problem?’ Two hours later, she goes on Facebook, and she gets an ad for her local liquor store.

(Quote source)

Redirect, resist, block. Bad guys can't misuse data that they don't have.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

The US Government, military, and large corporations are already aware of the threat and developed the formalized "OPSEC" (or "Operations Security") program to counter it. Luckily for you, in the more-than-decade I've been teaching OPSEC principles, I've realized that it's just "Privacy Skills with a lot more steps". We can both save a lot of time with the same effect by reducing it all to a simple philosophy:

Bad guys can't use or abuse information if they don't have it.

From here, it's just a matter of identifying the ways your data is lost or stolen and equipping you with appropriate countermeasures. If you're ready to get started, click below for the next lesson.

/home/jeremyd1/public_html/thegeekprofessor/graphics/courses/gid/ID_check.jpg not found!

When I worked for retail stores, part of my job was to convince customers to buy things on credit under terms that were carefully designed to cost you as much as possible. It was a bad deal even when you agreed to it, but it's even worse if some thief gets the goods while you get the debt

That's why I was always careful to look at ID cards and watch for signs of fraud. Like that one time I thought something wasn't right so I went to the back room to call the customer's home phone number. Guess who was at home right then and NOT at our store applying for credit?

Because of my effort, I stopped more instances of fraud and identity theft than every other store employee combined… which is frightening if you think about it. Why was I so much better? Was it because the fraudsters always came to me? Did I have some special talent for spotting issues? I don't think so. In almost every case, it was simply a matter of making an effort.

In my days of commission sales, you can bet it hurt to spend an hour helping a customer only to have to put a careful of high-profit stuff back on the shelves. Even as an hourly employee, turning away a sale was likely to bring down the wrath of management. You might think you could just explain the situation or show them the fakes, but I quite literally handed a manager a "credit card" that had been printed so recently the ink was still tacky. He handed it back and said, "looks fine to me!" ring it up!

What this has to do with fraud alerts

Imagination: Stop right there, criminal scum!

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Fraud alerts are supposed to work like this:

• You place the alert.
• Any new credit applications in your name are flagged.
• SWAT teams and angels and angel SWAT teams descend from the heavens upon any criminal who dares to try anything funny with your identity.

Reality: Code 10? I should check their identity more carefully, but meh...

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Here's how it actually works:

• The person running the credit sees the "alert" when they put in the application.
• They're bored, apathetic, under pressure from management, or not trained well enough so they push the application through.
• The thief walks out with cash and prizes

Of courses, this assumes they even notice the fraud alert at all. When I worked retail, it was a tiny flag near the bottom of the screen and easy to miss. But let's be really generous and say that all of this works exactly as intended. Thieves are scumbags, not idiots. Obviously they'll wait until after 90 days to use any identity they got from a data breach.

A fraud alert might be a little better than nothing at all, but it relies random strangers to have both the training/desire to protect you AND thieves that aren't smart enough to wait out the preposterously tiny fraud alert period. Fraud alerts are a joke and a fraud.

I'm an ID Theft Victim. Now What?

It's sad for me to hear the actual stories of the victims especially since it could have been so easily prevented in most cases if the lawmakers and the agencies who are supposed to protect you would just get their acts together.

Blame aside, the question is: what do you do? I wish I could help everyone, but every situation is different. What I will post here are the most common, basic steps you will take to handle the current situation and prevent further ones.

Stop the Hemmoraging

Most of ID Theft is a result of someone else gaining access to your credit reports. Things like getting a bank account, getting a job, getting a lease, turning on utilities, and getting a cellphone all require a credit check. The very first thing you need to do is cut off access to your credit files to prevent the problem from getting worse or re-occuring in the future.

1. File a police report with your local police and/or the Federal Trade Commission. All you need to do is say "I want to file a report of identity theft" and let them lead you through their process. They may or may not actually provide you much help or guidance, but that's ok. All you really need is a case number. You'll need this for several of the later steps.
2. Most of ID Theft activity is hinged on access to your credit report which is protected only by a combination of your personal information much of which can be accessed freely on the Internet. This needs to stop. Take your police report or case number and contact each of the three Credit Reporting Companies. Tell them you want to put a "Credit Freeze" on your file and make sure they don't try to charge you any fees (credit freezes should be free for ID Theft victims).
3. While you're on the phone with them, have them send you a copy of your current credit report. If the won't, use your "free coupon" granted by federal law by going to AnnualCreditReport.com (the ONLY legitimate site to get them). You are entitled to one free report per year from each of the three companies. The site will lead you through the process, but some of the companies will try to sell you add-ons like credit monitoring services or similar. Don't do it. Get your free report and nothing else. If you see a spot to enter a credit card, you did it wrong.

Repair the Damage

Now you're going to start fixing the damage they caused.

1. With your credit report in hand, you should be able to get an idea of what companies the scumbag opened accounts with or dealt with. You might even get some phone numbers and address information that's clearly not yours. Make a list of all of these and provide them to the police referencing your previous case number.
2. Contact each company and explain the situation. Provide the case number or a copy of the police report if necessary, but make sure that they conduct an investigation or remove your information from the account records. Your goal here is to make sure that they no longer contact you or report you in relation to the debt/account.
3. For each company you successfully do this with, follow the challenge process with the Credit Reporting Companies whose reports show that debt. They have 30 days to contact the creditor themselves to verify the item. If they can't (which they shouldn't because you just had the creditor remove your name from their records), they must remove that item from your report by law (based on the Fair Credit Reporting Act).

Shut it All Down

Someone is getting some benefit from your identity in the form of goods and/or services. You might have information of what those are and you might now. It may be worth hiring a private investigator to dig up information about yourself so you can figure out what kinds of records are in your name that shouldn't be.

Even if it didn't impact your credit report, take care of them. If you find out that the DMV for a state you've never lived in has records in your name, work to have them expunged. If someone activated a phone service for a house somewhere in your name, have it shut off. Follow every lead you have and stamp it flat. Best case scenario, you get enough information to identify the theif.

What next?

The above links are good resources to learn more about the issue, but if you want the biggest bang for the buck to learn quickly and clearly about the ID Theft problem and concrete steps you can take to prevent it in the future, please check out my Goodbye Identity Theft crash course Tags: ID Theft, Identity Theft

The Bad News

Bottom line, ID Theft is a low risk crime with only two steps:

1. Get someone's data
2. Use the data

Now I have goods, services, and special accesses, but you get all the consequences. Worst of all, government entities responsible for protecting you don't and companies make more money on ID Theft than they lose. There's no one looking out for you; you're on your own.

The Good News

Until now, you've been given incomplete or bad advice for how to respond to ID Theft risks, but that changes today. I will give you the bottom-line basics you need to make informed decisions; i.e., which defenses actually work and which are just snake oil pitched by ID Theft profiteers.

Let's get started!

Learning styles vary greatly so the material is available in two formats: video and text. The videos are intended as a high-level overview for covering ground quickly while the text version will have numerous inline references to sources and examples to give you a deeper understanding the the material. Use either or both to learn the material in the way that works for you!

This is a free online course. To get started, ID Theft - The Straight Basics

No security, no accountability. TJ Maxx

(Image is in the Public Domain)

So today my wife received a letter from our bank saying that her card was included in the data breach. They were very pleasant and helpful (as credit unions tend to be), but one thing caught my attention:

If at any time you suspect you may be a victim of fraud or identity theft, you may place a fraud alert on your credit file with one of the three major credit-reporting [companies]. A fraud alert will require any company or creditor to contact you to authorize any new accounts or loans.

For the record, fraud alerts are required, but can be ignored. The problem is that it's the issuing company's responsibility to check for the fraud alert and act accordingly. Since it hurts their business to do so, it's far more likely that they will "miss" the flag (especially when they're on commission). That means that it may help and it may not.