ID fraud prevention week fights UK's fastest growing crime

National Identity Fraud Prevention week kicked off in the UK on Monday. The scheme marks an attempt to raise public awareness of the threat of identity fraud, reckoned to be one of the UK's fastest growing financial crimes. One in ten Brits have already been a victim of identity fraud scams, which involve crooks impersonating …

[Adam Christie-Grant]

I would just quickly like to translate away from scare mongering..

And remind people most of this "Identity Theft" is credit card fraud plain and simple - Nothing new they don't have your details, NI Number, address, bank details or any of that crap - They are just using your credit card. The very low % of fraud that could possibly be called Identity theft is so miniscule as to not even get on the radar.

This is irresponsible reporting not the reg's fault this is down to the police/government.

[Anonymous Coward]

ID theft rising as banks push more liability onto consumers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Its not my identity that gets stolen, its the bank's money, and its their fault if they give it to someone they think is me!

[JasonW]

and to the card fraud...

... when are they going to make it illegal for card issuers to send out personalised/partially filled application forms? It might be a minuscule drop in the ocean, but I don't know anyone that's ever gone for a credit card on the back of a junk mailshot.

[Skizz]

How much?

£1.2bn a year. That figure has been used for God knows how many years now. You'd have thought it would be increasing.

[Hugh_Pym]

Fastest growing crime?

I disagree. Yesterday I pissed in a Wellington Boot for sale in Tesco's and put it back on the shelf. Today I've done it again three times already. That's a crime that has trebled overnight. Should the Daily Mail be made aware of the new fastest growing crime in Britain? Should there be a national body set up to counter this new terror? Of course not; fastest growing != biggest threat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rory Bremner master criminal

"* Over 59,000 victims of impersonation have been recorded in the first 9 months of 2009 - an alarming 36% increase from the same period in 2008"

Impersonation? Impersonating someone is not a crime, Rory Bremner is not a criminal. The real number from the report (not the misleading summary) is 16364, mostly people ordering stuff with your credit card number. Good old fashioned credit card fraud.

The check on the credit card address is a joke, it is often no more than a checksum of the digits in the address. The fix is to make the credit card companies legally liable for any losses, so they can no longer dump their losses on the vendors. Credit cards are being phased out in Europe as European bank switch to bank to bank transfers for online bills.

Also why do UK banks not issue the token? What's the problem there? A single phishing site is all that's needed to grab the login. With a token, the login is useless without the physical token. I don't understand what the problem with UK banks is, that so few issue the tokens when they're so common everywhere else?

Also why does the DVLA hand over home address details? Why? Who in their right mind, decided that the private details could be handed over to anything other than law enforcement? It's insane! yet nobody seems willing to fix the problem! Now they're adding Contact Point too, handing data on parents and kids around freely. Are they nuts?

[Sergie Kaponitovicz]

Are the e-vermin sending a message?

In the past 90 mins I have received 5 emails from 'HMRC' with the subject line "Notice of Undereported Income", and the usual suspicious-looking link.

When reported via SpamCop all 5 had come from different far east or east Europe ISPs (what a surprise).

Let's be honest, the cybercrooks are clever, and it would not be beyond belief that this assault is a 2 fingers in the air job: "catch us if you can".

[dunncha]

ID Prevention Week - Expect a call from your bank selling

Guess we will all be getting calls from our Banks selling their Data Protection Services.

We will protect you against any fraud on your account.

I always use my standard answer....

'If you done your job properly then I wouldn't need to pay somebody else to protect me from your incompetence

[Nic Brough 1]

It's not complex

Make the bank responsible for all fraud by default. Make them prove that fraud was committed by the card owner. Then we'll get a proper secure scheme out of them (chip & spin anyone?)

As for the potentially much more scary crime of identity theft, that's a whole different kettle of fish and the law needs a lot of clarification. Ideally, to include government ministers being locked up when their departments are wilfully negligent.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Hugh_Pym & criminal statue

LOL, thanks for that. No more welling boots from Tesco for me, grin.

The talk about making it a criminal offence for a gov department to lose data is meaningless. The first that has to happen is the return of the accountability the current government has worked so hard to eradicate. If the actual accountable person can be replaced by a convenient scapegoat it will leave the person responsible free to repeat the offence and nothing will improve.

Bring back rules and ensure crystal clear transparency and accountability. Only that will improve matters. Introducing laws that are either abused or ignored will just breed more contempt for the law, it won't fix the problem.

[Belvedere Mulholland]

Retail Footwear Piss Crime

I suppose you bleeding heart liberals are against the new government urine database too? Pah!

It is rather odd that this big hooha crime which is such a dreadful thing would not interest a policeman at all. The fuzz are simply not interested. The banks deal with it. And if you ask them about patterns of use (I have had my card details nicked to some unknown extent on one occasion) in order to avoid useless retailers, types of use, etc. they can't help.

Nobody deals with card crime... they just replace the cards. And increasingly block you every now and then (even with Verified For Visa.... what's that about then?) and phone you.

When the police take an interest I'll believe it is a problem.

[TeeCee]

Re: ID Prevention Week - Expect a call from your bank selling

Nah. Expect a call from a government minister pushing a nice new card that'll solve all your problems in one go more like.

"National Identity Fraud Prevention week"? It's got "ulterior motive" written all over it.

[Number6]

Misunderstanding

I thought that National Identity Fraud is what successive Home Secretaries have been trying to foist on us, despite widespread opposition to their big database and the cost of the scheme.

[Sergie Kaponitovicz]

The e-vermin ARE sending a message

From my IT manager:

These are all currently being blocked by the spamwall but performance is

degrading slowly due to the fact that we are currently getting about 8,000

per hour which added to everything else today is giving us a spectacular

rejection rate. The SpamWall is currnenty handling about 11,000 messages

per hour of which 97 % are garbage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...

Web server and Web Service security has got so bad I now run a basic security scan on a web server/service BEFORE giving them my personal details.

You wouldn't believe the number of recruitment companies and on-line retailers that are currently playing Russian Roulette with clients data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do these numbers come from?

According to recent news in Aus, one in five people have been victims of ID theft. That's a mere 4,400,000 victims. It makes 59,000 in the UK look a bit tame. C'mon UK, the ID theft Ashes are at stake here.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,26150536-15306,00.html

[A Bee]

Re: Expect a call from your bank selling

It's not just your bank.

I got an Identity Theft sales pitch from Staples this morning. Their solution to Identity Theft? A shredder.

[Guy Herbert]

@ A Bee

Staples's solution is probably the most cost effective on offer. Other than stopping the information being demanded and collected in the first place.

Trouble is you can't rely on banks and retailers, let alone big public-sector organisations, to exercise basic care with all the identity information they are busy (usually unecessarily, or only to satisfy another bureaucracy) twisting our arms to part with.

[John Dougald McCallum]

Shredder

@ A Bee that is not as daft as it sounds so long as it is a cross cutting shredder one of those that only produce strips is totaly usless might as well give all your details to the little shits.And another thing I didn't see any notice in any paper to say it was ID theft provention week kept that quiet didn't they.and another other thing credit card fraud is mostly of the card not present type.

[John G Imrie]

Please take this seriously.

I must say I think none of you are taking identity theft seriously enough.

Yours,

G Brown

10 Downing St.

London

[A J Stiles]

How to commit identity theft

The below link contains information which can be used to commit identity theft:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=curriculum+vitae.doc

This all sounds to me suspiciously like a sales pitch to sell paper shredders.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Hugh_Pym

I am particularly horrified by the increase in Tesco welly pissing. A 300% increase in this crime over a 48 hour period is most alarming!

Such an increase far outweighs the rise in rates of all other crimes, so why is this particular issue not being dealt with as a priority?

[JaitcH]

HSBC Has a Better Way!

Recently my debit card timed out. Three weeks late, my replacement card arrived.

Their security technique? Failing to deliver the PIN. Kept my money so secure that I couldn't even access it.

However, their card security is minimal. They dispatch the card in an envelope with, to mail theft characters, a well known design and an equally familiar return address in Kent.

Supposedly, they mail an identical envelope, with the same return address containing a PIN number two days later.

The first envelope serves as a flag to any would be thives and the second is a reward for their patience.

HSBC believes 1660's technology* is way ahead of secure messaging, .SMS or e-mail. Little wonder there is so much theft - HSBC makes it so easy. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

* Year Royal Mail introduced.

[MonkeyBot]

Youy can't steal an identity

You can falsify one and defraud a bank, but without copious amounts of drugs, you're not going to take my identity.

[Mark Eaton-Park]

This is just an excuse to use UK ID card

The answer to credit card fraud has already been posted however this article was aimed at increasing the support for the UK ID card by suggesting that a single proof of identity would stop this sort of thing.

This type of fraud will not be prevented by ID cards, in fact real identity theft will increase once the Government agencies get to loose your UKID data as they have with every other database they have got their hands on.

The banks should not be able to make unsubstantiated accusations against you if your card details are misused due to faults in their system nor penalise you for their errors. It is the same as car insurance, if I do not incur accident costs why should I be held accountable for those that do, I have to pay more because I do not have a say in the matter.

All my personal information should be my property and require me to agree to an use/ transfer/ collation, agencies who want unnecessary access to my data should not be permitted.

How many times have you applied for something only for the agent to ask for your NI/ DOB etc when it has nothing to do with the service offered. This information is then freely available to all their staff and any other agency share data with. All this without requiring additional authorisation from me, the data owner, it is hardly surprising that people I would not want to have my information know all about me and can use this information against me.

[TeeCee]

Re: @ Hugh_Pym

The problem here is that the increase is only alarming if it continues.

Today Hugh is going to need to piss in 27 wellies to keep things going. I think that's achievable.

Tomorrow he's going to need several of us to chip in to get to the 81 sloshy welly target if we genuinely wish to ensure that retail rubber footwear micturation incidents continue to alarm.

By Friday we'll all need to be out on the lash early doors in order to provide the raw materials and we'll need to get a #bootpissers tag going and a few hundred likeminded twats for the weekend.

I'm lost for what happens next week, but if this works out it could be the first one where the majority of people take the piss into Tesco rather than out of it.

[TeeCee]

Welly-piddling punchline.

(Double post - sorry).

Customer: "I need a refund on these boots I bought yesterday."

Tesco droid: "Yes sir. May I ask what the problem is?"

Customer: "There's a leak in them....."

[lukewarmdog]

Steal This. Jimmy.

Must. fight. urge. to. impersonate. Identity Theft team.

The numbers are just going to go up with the Government insisting we must all get online.

Last report says 10 million more Internet unaware people are just waiting to be phished.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6308547/Martha-Lane-Fox-over-10-million-in-UK-never-been-online.html

[Phil Endecott]

Flooding

OMG, if this continues, in only 44 days the entire volume of the oceans will be in the form of piss in Tesco wellies! We must act now to stop this!

[Anonymous Coward]

New oppertunity

piss in a Tesco welly

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