Net is making ID theft signature crime of era
30,000 Social Security complaints in 1999 — up from 11,000 in '98

WASHINGTON -- Law enforcement authorities are becoming increasingly worried about a sudden rise in the incidence of identity theft, the outright pilfering of people's personal information for use in obtaining credit cards, loans and other goods.

While identity theft is hardly new -- con men have been doing it for ages -- law enforcement officials and consumer advocates say the Internet is making identity theft one of the signature crimes of the digital era. Any visitor to cyberspace can find Web sites selling all sorts of personal information and, with that information in hand, thieves can acquire credit, make purchases and even secure residences in someone else's name.The Social Security Administration said it had received more than 30,000 complaints about the misuse of Social Security numbers last year, most of which had to do with identity theft. That was up from about 11,000 complaints in 1998 and 7,868 complaints in 1997. The Social Security Administration attributes the rise to the ease with which Social Security data can be collected on the Internet.

"The Internet allows these criminals to work anonymously and from all over the world," said Gregory Regan, head of the Secret Service's financial crimes division. "We don't think that people should be afraid of using the Internet, but all of this enthusiasm should be tempered with a little bit of caution."

Identity theft starts when thieves misappropriate someone's personal information -- address, date of birth, Social Security number and the like -- to get fake driver's licenses and credit cards. With that information and identification in hand, criminals are free to operate under a new name in whatever way they like.

For their part, several of the nation's largest credit card issuers are building a database with help from the Secret Service so they can share information and identify common geographic locations where credit card fraud occurs.

Consumers rarely face monetary losses related to identity theft because merchants or banks are typically the ones stuck with bogus credit card charges.

But the real damage is not monetary -- it's emotional. Victims say they not only must face the reality that their financial privacy has been compromised by an anonymous thief, but also often endure lengthy, painstaking struggles to clean up credit records that have been tarnished by identity thieves.

In some of the worst cases, when identity thieves commit crimes and use their false identities to mislead police, victims of identity theft suddenly find themselves saddled with criminal records.