Tracking Down An ID Thief

from the just-use-your-name dept

MSNBC is running an interesting article about a guy who had his credit card stolen, and then discovered that someone had signed up to get a lot more personal info about him from some online research service. Since he knew whoever it was was using his own name, he called the research company and got them to reveal the user's password to him, as well as the hotmail address he used to create the count. On a whim, the guy tried the same password with the hotmail account - and was in. Suddenly he had a whole log of information about how a identity theft goes about his business, creating new identities, sending bad checks from one identity to another, and other such activities. Of course, no one was interested in helping him catch the guy. The credit card company doesn't care beyond returning the money, the FBI won't touch the case unless the dollar amounts are much higher (who knew the FBI was only for the rich these days?), and the police say they have too big a backlog of identity theft cases. If anything, the guy is probably likely to be thrown in jail for "hacking" into someone else's account.

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