When you receive your explanation of benefits in the mail after paying a visit to the doctor, you may feel like you are being robbed due to the high charges. However, if you are Anne Peters, MD, the financial crimes committed against you are the real thing. Dr. Peters was the victim of a fairly common but rarely talked about form of fraud: physician identity theft.

Peters first learned about this crime approximately six years ago when doctors in her home state of California started phoning her. The other doctors’ patients were telling them that Peters was billing for procedures she hadn’t performed. This was the first she had heard of it. Medicare was paying out these claims, but the money was not going to Peters.

Peters reported the crimes to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which did not serve her well at first. She was prosecuted for grand theft, to the tune of over $650,000, and she was asked to pay back taxes on the Medicare payments…. so much for being an honest whistle blower.

It’s likely that the thief was able to use Peters’ information to perpetrate this scam because he got a hold of her physician credentialing numbers. That’s pretty much all you need to impersonate and doctor on paper, and security is rather lax. According to Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum, “This information is far too publicly available … It’s really out there.”

The government has taken some steps recently to make it easier for victimized physicians to clear their names. For example, the Center for Program Integrity now offers a remediation initiative. This is not enough, though, and one of the problems is politics. While some say greater protection is needed for doctors, other attest that it would be too cumbersome to put in additional safeguards when so many organizations in the medical field need access to physician credentials.

One of the biggest helps right now is moving the issue into the public eye. Peters complains that there was no one she could speak with regarding the identity theft that happened to her. “I couldn’t get anyone to believe I was innocent.”

Using the argument that secure employees are more productive employees, identity theft juggernaut LifeLock has added its product to the Transamerica Employee Benefits package, which features various workplace insurances. In a recent press release, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis wrote, “By aligning with Transamerica, we will be able to maximize our opportunities to provide our award-winning identity theft protection.”

Another thing to note is that if an employee does become a victim of identity theft, it is possible that this person will use company time to try to clear his or her name. In fact, it is likely, since most financial institutions operate during normal business hours only. While this benefit is featured as a voluntary insurance product, it is really a complete protection service. Browse this site to see all that LifeLock has to offer. The company adds additional services all the time to work to protect you better.

The press release also mentioned some sobering statistics from Javelin Research:

• The 2012 Identity Fraud Report cited 1.4 new identity theft victims in 2011. These are new victims who were not affected in the year previous.
• The delay between when you’re victimized and when you find out can be as much as 165 days or more.

Randy Clarkson, president of Transamerica Employee Benefits, is excited to feature identity theft protection as an addition to its service package. “By offering LifeLock’s identity theft protection services, we are able to provide our customers with access to a wide array of insurance and non-insurance protection options.”

If you are a business owner, you may wish to consider providing identity theft protection as a piece of your employee benefits package. If that is a little too ambitious for you, consider purchasing a personal plan and encouraging your employees or coworkers to do so as well. You may find yourself the hero of the office.

I’ll admit it; I’m a holdout. I’m going to be one of the very last people on this planet to own a SmartPhone. I’m perfectly happy with my flip phone. You simply close it when you don’t want to be bothered, and you don’t have to worry about getting emails from work on the weekends. Another reason that I’m happy with my choice to stay old fashioned is that I don’t have to worry about thieves accessing my personal information through my phone. Why? I don’t have any personal information on it, unless you count a photo of my dog. If you have a SmartPhone, though, you should read the following information to protect your data.

According to Ted Samson of Infoworld, many popular mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad, including Facebook, Dropbox and LinkedIn, allow unauthorized users to access them since they save authentication data in plain text files that are not encrypted. If the data is transferred to another device, such as a laptop computer, a thief can steal that information and use it to log in to the accounts and impersonate the legitimate user. He or she will not have to know the login name or password.

Security researcher Gareth Wright attested that the flaw is not limited to the three apps mentioned above, but could actually be present in dozens of other mobile apps, if not more. Those most at risk are individuals who plug their phones into computers in unsecure areas, such as at the library or in a college dorm. It is never a good idea to allow your information to be downloaded to a public computer – or a private computer that is used by more than one person.

Wright advised that SmartPhone users who wish to continue using these apps put a password on their phones that is longer than the traditional four numbers. He also asserted that they should leave their phones locked when they are plugged in and use the Find My iPhone function if they have it.

It is unclear whether this same security flaw is present in apps with other operating systems, such as the Android. Even if it isn’t, it’s a good idea to follow the tips above. Another thing you can do with your SmartPhone is purchase an identity theft protection service. Just make sure to do so securely as well.

Filing for a marriage license is normally a joyous occasion. It means the big day is approaching and the preparations are almost done. However, for Anna Vargas of New York City, it was just the beginning of an arduous journey.  It all started when she lost her birth certificate over 16 years ago, which gave identity thieves access to her personal information. She found out when she applied for her license that, by using this information, two men had already legally married her – without her knowledge, one from Mexico and one from Peru. The city clerk rejected her application.

Though Vargas was eventually permitted to go through with her nuptials – after registering for her marriage license in another jurisdiction – her identity theft nightmare continued. Three years after her real wedding, one of her “husbands” filed for divorce. Somehow, he obtained her mother in law’s address and actually showed up at her house, papers in hand.

After that event, Vargas decided it was time to clear her name, and she finally had the two “marriages” legally nullified with the state. However, she soon after discovered that she is “married” to another man. This case is still ongoing.

How wonderful to be that popular that so many men want to marry you, especially when they do so without letting you know. Though thieves sometimes steal American identities for immigration purposes, this case is pretty extreme. It also shows failure on the part of the New York judicial system in letting all of these marriages go through.

Regardless, Vargas should have taken care of the two “marriages” as soon as she learned about them, instead of letting them stand for another three years. Who knows what else the thieves have been doing with her information during that time? They may even have some fictional children by now.

This also emphasizes an important point about safeguarding your birth certificate. You should never put yourself in a situation where you are able to lose this document. Leave it in a safe deposit box, or at least in a fireproof safe in your home, unless it is imperative that you take it out, such as if you need it to apply for a passport. You should not need it to apply for a job, a place to live, or for credit. If you’re asked for it in these circumstances, you need to find out why this is necessary before agreeing.

An identity theft protection plan could have likely prevented these marriages. When the thieves registered their licenses with the state, Vargas would have been notified. Perhaps, these policies weren’t available when the “blessed events” took place, but one hopes that Vargas has signed up for one of these services at least now.

You may think that one time when a thief would not want to steal your identity is when you are filing for bankruptcy. It seems that this would be the one time when your credit standing does not make you a prime candidate for this crime. Well, unlucky for you, your information still proves valuable, and it is a great time for thieves to be able to access it fairly easily unless you take precautions.

According to Tampa Bay Bankruptcy Center, “No event in your life will uncover all your personal financial information the way bankruptcy does.” You will need to dig up all of your information on your assets and liabilities and provide them to a third party – normally your lawyer or the court you are filing with. To gain this information for yourself, or to provide it to others, you could leave yourself vulnerable.

Here are some tips to avoid doing that:

• Make sure all of your debts are yours. You don’t want to use your settlement, and possible your liquefied assets, to settle someone else’s debt. Check your credit report and score carefully with all of the three major bureaus.
• Do not automatically provide financial information to anyone who asks. Find out from your lawyer what you need to divulge to creditors and debt collectors. Remember, you are not required to speak to them directly even if they call you repeatedly. You can instead request to have the calls stopped and they are legally required to comply.
• Sometimes lenders will send you credit offers after your bankruptcy goes through in order to reestablish a relationship with you. Be careful before accepting them. First of all, the rates and terms will not be very good, in most cases. Second of all, they may be scams. Do your research carefully.

When you’re going through a bankruptcy, an identity theft protection plan can prove to be very helpful. Many sources advise credit monitoring during this period. Even if they don’t find your financials to be too attractive, thieves can use your valuable information to get medical care, obtain new credit, or even create identifying documents, which they can use to travel. Don’t sell yourself short; thieves still see you as valuable. You need to think of yourself the same way.

Identity theft doesn’t always have to do with finance. Sometimes it simply involves something that can be even more valuable than money: your good name. One of the most bizarre instances of identity theft in the news lately involved the social networking site, Facebook, a bitter ex-girlfriend and a police officer in New Jersey.

Dana Thornton, 43, dated detective Michael Lasalandra for a period of three months back in 2007. Apparently, the breakup didn’t go so well, since – as revenge – she Thornton decided to put up a social networking page in Lasalandra’s name, essentially slandering him with the posts she made. On the page, she made reference to the fact that she – posing as her ex – was “sum with a gun” interested in drugs, booze, and other illegal activities.

Lasalandra told police about the page after discovering it in 2009, and Thornton was charged with identity theft the next year, although she recently reached a plea bargain where the charges will be dropped if she completes a mandatory counseling program.

If the charges hadn’t been dropped, this case would have been one of the first where identity theft legally applied in regards to the creation of a fraudulent online ID. A judge had already ruled that this crime did meet the legal definition of identity theft.

While it is normal for breakups not to go well, and it is normal to be a little bitter, going for identity theft because of it is going way too far. Many see posting things on Facebook as a bit of a harmless prank, but this is not the case. With millions of people on the site: employers, politicians, law enforcement … it is very important to be portrayed in a positive light. Negative postings can severely harm your credibility.

Social networking sites often seem to be behind the times when it comes to preventing their members from being victims of identity theft. Due to crimes like this one, Facebook  have added a security feature to the site to help flag potentially fraudulent accounts. Users are asked to enter a phone number so that Facebook can call and verify the accounts. If they fail to enter a number, they can no longer log in.

Of course, this is not foolproof, and may not even resolve all the issues. There are thousands of people who have fake social networking accounts for various reasons, and it is nearly impossible to detect all of them. However, this can somehow become an identity guard. The best advice I can give you is to do a search for your name on the most popular social networking sites periodically to see if an account has been set up without your knowledge. If you spot one, immediately request that the site take it down, and notify law enforcement of the fraud. What can start off as a joke – or a silly case of revenge – can quickly turn serious. Don’t let yourself be victimized in this way.

You can take as many precautions as possible in regards to identity theft, such as putting your mail in a locked box or shredding your credit card statements. This will not keep you from becoming victimized by the dreaded data breach, where your information gets disclosed due to a third party that possesses it not taking enough precautions.

A huge data breach just hit headlines in the past week regarding Global Payments, Inc., a payment processing vendor that works with both Visa and MasterCard. Global Payments has access to the personal information of over 10 million people who use credit and debit cards all around the world, since it partners with these traditional credit card issuers to allow merchants to accept payments.

Thanks to a hacker, over 1.5 million debit or credit card users had their personal information exposed. More specifically, a thief was able to get into Global Payments’ computer system and steal these peoples’ data through a data exportation process. At this time, it is unclear as to how this happened, and it doesn’t seem that the breached organization wants to be especially forthcoming on the matter. It’s reported that the affected customer base is limited to U.S. consumers.

There is, though speculation on how this happened. According to Avivah Litan of Gartner Reasearch, “A Central American gang broke into the company’s system by answering the application’s knowledge-based authentication questions correctly.” Doesn’t say much for the security system there.

According to ComputerWorld, Paul Garcia, CEO of Global Payments, insisted that the data that was exposed did not include the names, addresses or Social Security numbers of account holders. However, MasterCard and Visa sent information to their cardholders saying that both Track 1 data: which includes that which is mentioned above, and Track 2 data, which is more specific to the cards themselves than the users, such as account numbers and expirations dates, was stolen.

In response to the breach, Visa removed Global Payments from its list of validated service providers, but both Visa and MasterCard continue to process payments as normal. Both companies went out of their way to say that their own systems were not compromised as a result of the breach of the vendor. Not very comforting.

This is not the first breach of this type to occur. It is simply the latest. That makes it curious as to why more Americans don’t have identity theft protection plans when they know that crimes like these occur every day, all over the world. While customers are being notified about their information being compromised, it may be too late for some, or they may ignore the security warnings.

It’s advised that if you are a victim of this breach that you begin watching your credit very closely. You may even wish to cancel your card and open up a new account with a different number. This will not keep thieves from having access to information besides your credit card number and expiration date, but it is better than them having everything they need at their disposal. While your credit card company may offer free monitoring as a result of this data breach, I strongly encourage you to consider your identity theft protection options.

As the most well known provider of identity theft protection plans in the United States, Lifelock continues to grow in size and scope. Just this week, Lifelock acquired ID Analytics, an organization based in San Diego that developed a product which can help detect credit fraud using a computer-based model. This model uses patterns to predict consumer behavior based on how fraud has occurred in the past, making it helpful in future crime prevention. Currently, ID Analytics serves mostly businesses, helping them police credit card purchases and applications. ID Analytics was founded in 2002 and has since raised $35.2 million in capital. Together, the two businesses had combined revenues of $200 million in 2011.

While Lifelock is taking on the company as a fully owned subsidiary, ID Analytics will continue to operate independently. Bruce Hansen will continue his tenure as ID Analytics’ CEO, but LifeLock’s CEO will ultimately be responsible for company direction and decision making. You can quickly see how the business applications of ID Analytics’ service can be transferred to the consumer market. As part of its service package, LifeLock promises to protect its users against unauthorized use of their credit accounts. Using the capabilities of ID Analytics can help make the process quicker and more efficient – and it can make it easier for LifeLock members to be notified in time to prevent thieves from opening accounts in their names.

Exact details of the acquisition deal were not disclosed, but it was revealed that LifeLock raised over $100 million in preferred equity and took on $70 million in senior secured debt to ensure that everything went smoothly. Key investors included Goldman, Sachs & Company; River Street Management; Symantec Corporation and several others. According to Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, who gained notoriety after publishing his Social Security number in an extensive advertising campaign, “ This acquisition will further strengthen [us] … By combining ID Analytics’ enterprise solutions and proprietary data capabilities with LifeLock’s brand leadership and consumer expertise, we see a company poised for significant long-term growth.”

None of this information would be news, nor would it be happening, if identity theft wasn’t still a significant threat to consumers in the United States. New statistics released in 2011 by Javelin Research put the number of American victims at 8.1 million. While it is lower than the peak numbers of between 10 and 11 million seen in previous years, the odds are quite high that you or someone in your family will be victimized.

While LifeLock is certainly not your only option when it comes to an identity theft protection plan, it is the most comprehensive and hence one of the most sought after and trusted packages. Explore this site to find out the latest information on products and services offered and to see current pricing.

While most public focus remain on personal identity theft, Brian Kemp, the Secretary of State of Georgia, is putting his focus on another type: business identity theft. This type is as easy as it sounds: thieves pretend to represent a business either for personal financial gain or to garner the personal information of individuals.

Kemp recently announced that the National Association of Secretaries of State, or NASS, released a white paper to all of its members in an attempt to educate business owners and neutralize this threat. You can find the paper, entitled Developing State Solutions to Business Identity Theft: Prevention and Detection Efforts by Secretary of State Offices at nass.org.

Kemp hopes that people representing many different types of business will take advantage of this publication, from state offices to financial institutions. After all, we are working towards the same goal: preventing identity theft and fraud. A task force was used to develop the document to ensure that varying opinions were heard.

Some of the efforts Georgia is taking to prevent this type of identity theft include raising general awareness among business owners and working to help law enforcement prosecute the criminals. One huge problem with identity theft is that the culprits can be difficult to catch. It’s heartening that at least one state is trying to be proactive about prevention.

Kemp, in his early days in office, instituted a requirement that businesses that form or renew online provide the state with an email address. This email address is used as a point of contact if changes to the agency’s mailing address on file are made. This deters criminals who may try to receive the business’ demographic and financial information by changing its address to theirs. Another way the state tries to help prevent the crime is by quickly alerting the authorities if fraud does occur, usually within 24 hours – and sometimes within 12. While theft may still happen, it can stop it before the thief has time to carry out her entire plot.

Funny how the Secretary’s plans sound a lot like an identity theft protection plan. With this type of plan, you can be notified very quickly if your personal information is changed on any of your accounts, including not just your address but other pertinent details. You can also get help with getting your life back in order if identity theft does occur in a very timely manner.

And it doesn’t take a task force to set up a plan. You can find the plan for you just by exploring this website. This puts you ahead of an entire state in preparation, all for an affordable price and just a few minutes of your time.

Just visit this link to compare identity theft protection services.

Is surviving identity theft six times an accomplishment or a disappointment? For Stacey Cowley, the tech editor for CNN Money, it is both. She recently told USAA magazine about how she has had many different thieves access her bank accounts periodically over the past eight years. She blames the first time on using a “sketchy ATM,” meaning one that wasn’t at or near a financial institution but instead on the street next to a local deli. The ATM was altered so that it recorded both her card number and her PIN. Then a thief used her information to order pizza in a town several states over.

But that is the least of it. It’s pretty easy to recover the cost of a pizza, but it takes a little more work if the thief decides to purchase something larger. Say, a Mercedes. Convincing all parties involved that this property is not yours (even if you wish it were) can take many hours, many dollars and many headaches. Well, unless you have an identity theft protection plan before such a crime happens to you. While protection plans are focused on prevention for the most part, many also offer services to help you if you are victimized, such as insurance policies to cover your expenses, even such things as lost wages if you have to spend the day at the Social Security office.

That being said, even with an identity protection plan in place you should still be careful. Cowley learned that she should keep a bit of cash on hand at home just in case a thief got hold of her debit card and she suddenly had to cancel it. She also learned not to carry all of her credit cards with her and to never have just one credit account. While these items can be replaced, they cannot be replaced immediately, and you don’t want to leave yourself in a lurch. She was left begging friends for lunch money for about seven days.

As far as “sketchy” ATMs go, just use your better judgment. If you have a bad feeling about a machine, or it looks like it has been tampered with, move on to the next one. There are few places in this country that don’t have an overabundance of bank machines, and you can charge most things on your debit card anyway. It could end up saving you a whole lot of money in the long run, plus a whole lot of aggravation.