NIMROD-SMITH-L Archives

From: "BARBARA H. SWIRE" <>
Subject: Personal Info on the Net
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 15:53:48 -0500

Hi,

Since there has been no activity on the list and also because some of
the list members have web pages, I thought this might be interesting to
all. It is after all a matter that concerns us all, whether we have a
web page or not. Anyway, it is interesting information.

Barbara

Subject: [D-S] Fwd: Living persons listed on home pages
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 12:46:32 EDT
From: "Pat B. Clarke" <>
To:

I thought this homepage information was critical enough that it should
be posted........ hope you agree.

U.S. News and World Report
News You Can Use 5/11/98

ON MONEY
BY MARGARET MANNIX

Home-page snoops

Does your family have a home page on the Internet? If so, you might want
to reconsider how much personal information you post online. Con artists
who steal others' identities, get credit in their names, then leave
innocent people with a mountain of debt to fight and ruined credit to
clean up are discovering the charms of the Net.

Old-fashioned techniques like wading through Dumpsters for discarded
credit-card receipts take time. These days, a savvy thief can hack into
an Internet service provider's subscriber list and lift credit-card
numbers by the thousands. Databases full of sensitive information have
been inadvertently left open in cyberspace. And some online outfits
peddle sensitive information without regard to privacy, despite Federal
Trade Commission scrutiny last year that encouraged many to limit how
they sell services like looking up Social Security numbers.

Meanwhile, thousands of netizens are unknowingly making it easier for
thieves to steal their identities by posting individual home pages,
family genealogies, and résumés. Sure, there's no harm in posting
photographs of Morris or Fido. And only the foolish post a Social
Security number on a Web site. But many pages are packed with the sort
of details identity thieves crave: full names, birth dates, birthplaces,
addresses, occupations, degrees, phone numbers. With the click of a
mouse, a thief has a personal dossier at his fingertips.

Think about it. A name, birth date, and birthplace will get you a birth
certificate, and a driver's license is not far behind. "The driver's
license, unfortunately, has become a de facto ID," says Beth Givens,
director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. It's the key
to all sorts of financial services, and it propels a thief closer to the
magic number: the Social Security number.

Mom's maiden name. Some family tree tracers place details like a
mother's maiden name online. That's often a common password for credit
cards and bank accounts. Revealing such personal details, says Ed
Howard, executive director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest
in Los Angeles, is "privacy suicide."

As Howard points out, the Internet isn't a toy. Your home page may have
hooked you up with a long-lost friend or relative, but it can also put
you at risk. Identity-theft victims suffer the aftermath of the
criminal's spending sprees for years in the form of calls from
collection agencies, ruined credit, even mistaken arrest.

While the Internet is a wonderful tool for genealogists (it has
revolutionized family research), think again before jeopardizing the
privacy of your relatives by putting intimate details up on the Web. "If
a family member is going to put up the genealogy, I think they should
notify all the living members of that family tree," says Givens--who
would prefer her family tree in book form.

You'll never have complete control over your personal information, so
you'll never be immune to fraud. But why make it easy for someone to
impersonate you? If you wouldn't post your background on your local
grocery store's bulletin board, don't put it on the Internet. "It's the
world's bulletin board," says Carole Lane, author of Naked in
Cyberspace: How to Find Personal Information Online (Pemberton Press,
1997, $29.95). And con artists are checking it out.

Take a bite out of credit crimes
Tip: Identity thieves like to rifle through mailboxes for preapproved
credit card and loan solicitations, fill them out, and start using other
people's credit. A 1997 amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (the
law that governs credit bureaus) required credit bureaus to establish
toll-free "opt out" lines that consumers can call to remove their names
from those mailing lists. To keep your mailbox free of such identity
thief temptations, call any of the three largest credit bureaus:

Equifax
(800) 556-4711

Experian
(800) 353-0809

Trans Union
(800) 680-7293

This thread:

• Personal Info on the Net by "BARBARA H. SWIRE" <>