When Your Business Knowledge of Identity Theft Gets Personal
By Ann Cunningham, Director, Americas Marketing, ACI Worldwide
Identity theft is a scary aspect in both the business world and your own personal life. When those two worlds blend and it touches your child, the knowledge you’ve gained about fraud risk becomes the foremost thought in your mind, and you automatically fear the worst-case scenario.
My 18-year-old son recently traveled with his classmates on his first international trip. He had the task to acquire his passport. He knew a passport was an important, government issued document required to travel outside the country and valid for 10 years. Before he left for his trip, I had discussions with him about the risk of identity theft if he lost his passport and about the importance of protecting his passport by keeping it safe.
To make a long story short, my son lost his passport after re-entering the United States, somewhere between his connecting flight and home. Because I had discussed this very danger with him several times, I went over the edge when he told me he lost it. He had a 50 percent chance of a good person finding it and returning it and a 50 percent chance of my worst nightmare - a crook finding it and selling it.
I told my son about scenario No. 2 and how the “new boy” from Eastern Europe would be arriving in the U.S. in two days with his name, his address and his picture. With few organizations using identity resolution-based analysis, it wouldn’t be long after that the new boy would have a driver’s license with his own photograph and my son’s name, and later the new boy would have my son’s social security number to open new bank and credit accounts, and my son would have a mountain of credit debt in his name. This hit home with him, and his fear was insurmountable.
Because I work in an industry that provides fraud detection and prevention solutions to financial institutions and retailers, I am well aware of the dangers of identity theft and the consequences of it. I’ve read the studies indicating that as many as 9 million Americans fall victim to identity theft every year and that, without identity resolution technologies, the result can range from a mountain of fraudulent debt to a false criminal record.
Working at a company that provides e-payment solutions, I also know the tools available today to help detect identity theft: search engines, neural networks, rules based systems, identity resolution and entity analysis, comparative analytics, and account monitoring tactics. Although these can’t stop a criminal from stealing my son’s or anyone else’s identity given the opportunity, these solutions can stop a criminal from using his or your identity.
Although consumers should take responsibility for protecting their identity in every way possible, not all of them do. Not everyone shreds every bit of paper that holds personal information. Many people give out pertinent information over the telephone or Internet without considering the risk of identity theft. And plenty of people assume that every Internet retailer is safe and honest.
All retailers - online and brick-and-mortar - must be proactive in the fight against identity theft and the use of identity resolution is a powerful tool. In the end, this will protect both the retailer and its customers. The best practice is for retailers to employ as many prevention and detection tools as feasible to protect both the business and its customers. Whether or not a retailer has fallen victim to fraud from identity theft, the time to implement identity resolution solutions is now. Growth trends and forecasts for identity theft and account takeover are astronomical. Criminals won’t just go away and stop committing fraud; rather, they become cleverer and more innovative right along with the solutions to defeat them.
As technology and payments solution users and providers, most retailers cover as many bases as possible, but criminals just keep applying new tactics against this problem. Thus, in our fight against this problem, we must continually refine our current solutions and deploy new tools as they become available to help fight the battle.
To bring closure to my story, my son was lucky enough to have a good person return his passport, and it now sits in lockup in a safe deposit box. I’m betting that on his next international trip his passport will be better secured.
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