Forum Discussion
jeromep
Oct 08, 2020Explorer II
To the OP: do you feel you know the genesis of your ID theft? If so, I'd love to know how you think it occurred.
To be honest, and coming from a financial services background, it is almost impossible to target the source of ID theft, either an action the victim took when conducting a transaction, or the merchant which may have had weak command and control over their payment processing or customer records facilities.
People can often point to a large and publicly known data breach, such as the Target break from many years ago, or the Hartland System breach before that, as where it may have occurred, but nobody in the financial services or data processing chain really knows where ID theft really starts. And for those that are now aware, Hartland Systems (they may go by a different name now) is a large merchant card processor, so they sell card processing services, mostly to small and medium sized businesses, which includes the card terminal, along with the software and support to accept cards and settle the transactions to their bank. Every time you use a card for a payment, whether it is a physical card, a mobile wallet like ApplePay, or online, there is a merchant processor in the mix that is facilitating the card transaction.
Anyway, when we book RV parks or campgrounds the staff are most interested in how we are going to pay and seem much less interested in who we are. When we stay in hotels they always have to see your ID and get your card, but I've never had them walk away with the ID, and I'd balk if they did. Many places won't even touch your ID, they will look at it and use it to find your reservation in the computer.
The best protections against ID theft is to assume that it will happen, but to keep an eye out on your accounts and financial relationships. Online banking, online brokerage accounts, are all your friends and you should be logging into your financial services regularly to review transactions and look for anything you haven't done. You should also be reviewing monthly statements and balancing your accounts. And turning on transaction alerts with your banks is a great way to know when things are occurring which maybe shouldn't be.
As Mel, the cook from "Alice", once said, "the best defense is a good offense."
To be honest, and coming from a financial services background, it is almost impossible to target the source of ID theft, either an action the victim took when conducting a transaction, or the merchant which may have had weak command and control over their payment processing or customer records facilities.
People can often point to a large and publicly known data breach, such as the Target break from many years ago, or the Hartland System breach before that, as where it may have occurred, but nobody in the financial services or data processing chain really knows where ID theft really starts. And for those that are now aware, Hartland Systems (they may go by a different name now) is a large merchant card processor, so they sell card processing services, mostly to small and medium sized businesses, which includes the card terminal, along with the software and support to accept cards and settle the transactions to their bank. Every time you use a card for a payment, whether it is a physical card, a mobile wallet like ApplePay, or online, there is a merchant processor in the mix that is facilitating the card transaction.
Anyway, when we book RV parks or campgrounds the staff are most interested in how we are going to pay and seem much less interested in who we are. When we stay in hotels they always have to see your ID and get your card, but I've never had them walk away with the ID, and I'd balk if they did. Many places won't even touch your ID, they will look at it and use it to find your reservation in the computer.
The best protections against ID theft is to assume that it will happen, but to keep an eye out on your accounts and financial relationships. Online banking, online brokerage accounts, are all your friends and you should be logging into your financial services regularly to review transactions and look for anything you haven't done. You should also be reviewing monthly statements and balancing your accounts. And turning on transaction alerts with your banks is a great way to know when things are occurring which maybe shouldn't be.
As Mel, the cook from "Alice", once said, "the best defense is a good offense."
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