Shred, White and Blue

The crime of identity theft undermines the basic trust on which our economy depends. When a person takes out an insurance policy, or makes an on-line purchase, or opens a savings account, he or she must have confidence that personal financial information will be protected and treated with care. Identity theft harms not only its direct victims, but also many businesses and customers whose confidence is shaken. Like other forms of stealing, identity theft leaves the victim poor and feeling terribly violated.

- President George W. Bush

Over the past several months I have read a number of stories with screaming headlines touting the fact that a number of financial services institutions were "joining in the fight" against identity theft by scheduling "shredding days" for their customers. They were arranging for companies that specialize in shredding large quantities of documents to come to their parking lots and accept cartons of theoretically outdated (yet personally sensitive) documents from their customers in order to shred them on the spot.

No doubt, this is a noble undertaking. Noble because anything that enables consumers to discard sensitive information in a way not useful to identity thieves definitely puts one on the side of the angels. Good for them, I said. But then I considered the next logical question: So what else are they doing?  Unfortunately, as I scoured a number of their sites, I noticed that this was all they were doing. That saddened me.

Identity theft is serious business. It is a major national, indeed, international crisis, which looted the American economy to the tune of $57 billion during 2005 and drained hundred of millions of hours from the lives of the approximately 10 million consumers forced to deal with some form of this heinous crime.

It is the fastest growing crime in the country. It is not the "flavor of the month" among the law enforcement community. It simply isn't going to fade away over the next year or two. It will be with us for at least the next 2 decades.

While it cannot be defeated today, if we as a nation commit to an effort on the grand scale of Y2K involving cooperation, communication and collaboration among businesses, consumers, government, law enforcement and the media, we have a shot at containing it -- or at least until we get the proper tools in place, like widespread deployment of biometrics and enactment of appropriate legislative and regulatory initiatives and the provision of sufficient resources to get law enforcement personnel the funding they need.

It demands much more than sound bites and "special" days. It requires:

• Consumers to protect themselves by shredding their own documents, securing their mail, protecting their sensitive data and staying alert regarding their credit and personal finances.
• Businesses to better protect the personal data they collect, store and distribute including the development and implementation of tougher security protocols, employee education initiatives, security breach response programs and more widespread use of encryption.
• Legislators to be less interested in issuing sound bites and acceding to the wishes of political action committees and more committed to passing legislation that affords their constituents greater flexibility to shut down unauthorized access to credit files, more identity theft passport programs and tougher, consistent notification laws. Further, they need to provide law enforcement agencies greater resources to fight the crime and empower judges to hand down tougher penalties to those who would perpetrate and benefit from identity theft.

In a nutshell, for a victim of identity theft: "They do the crime……You do the time."  Doesn't this deserve more than "shredding days," from institutions we trust?  Consumer education, employee continuing education, credit monitoring, fraud monitoring, resolution, encryption, tougher security protocols, security response programs -- these are the "key words" institutions should be speaking. And, they should be providing this either free or at a reasonable cost – to their customers.

While it is their job to get with the program, it is our job as consumers to push them there and keep them there. If they won’'t go willingly, we have the right to go elsewhere, to give our business to those institutions that respect us and the sanctity of our personal information.

Adam K. Levin
President/Credit.com
Former Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs