Identity Theft, 10 Million Victims, Expert and Speaker Robert Siciliano www.IDTheftSecurity.com

Pretty stunning new report out today about identity theft. It is on the rise. You gotta make sure it doesn't happen to you. We'll tell you how. Identity theft is a big problem, and now we hear it is getting even worse. A new study says the number of victims has jumped 22% last year. That puts the losses at a staggering $48 billion. Can you believe that? But the good news, people are catching on faster to the fraud, and they say the average loss is falling. So how can we protect ourselves from being ripped off? Here to tell us is Robert Siciliano. He's an identity theft expert with Verdesis.com. Robert, uh, what do we do first? I mean, how can we find out if indeed we are victims of identity theft?

Well, as a consumer, it is very important that you are paying close attention to your personal identifying information and what it's— what's being done with it. You have to pay attention to your credit reports to make sure that there aren't any accounts that are opened up under your name. You have to closely monitor all of it.

Well, let me stop you right there. Well, what do I do? How do I— I get my credit card statements online, but how do you get a credit report?

You go online, you go to annualcreditreport.com, you search out annualcreditreport.com, and you procure your credit report for free. From there, you can see what accounts are opened up under your name. You can also go to Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, purchase your credit report, look to see if there are any anomalies, any accounts that are opened up under your name that you didn't authorize.

And if you find that, what do you do? Call the credit card company and say, hey, what's What's this?

From there, you have to call each individual creditor that has been opened up under your name and find out what needs to be done with that particular creditor to shut down those unauthorized accounts.

Well, how do you know if something's wrong out there? I mean, sometimes people— you get your statements, you think your wife may have done something, or husband, or your kids may have charged something. I mean, how do you exactly go through every single charge?

Absolutely. You have to pay really close attention to all of your different statements, your credit card statements, your bank statements. Often, people who have been victimized find out as a result of bill collectors calling them for products and services they didn't buy, charges showing up on statements that they didn't authorize, and even getting arrested for crimes that they didn't commit. So what's happening is overall, people are being bombarded by all these different offers. Identity thieves are taking advantage of it. They're going through their trash, they're finding their personal information online, and then they're opening up new accounts under their name, and then they don't know that the damage has been done until it's too late.

You hit a good point. It's like midnight last summer. I'm sitting there and a car pulls up. I got 2 bags of garbage on the street. Guy takes one, puts it in the trunk and drives away. I was thinking, what do I do, call the police and say someone stole my garbage? Was that an identity theft potential? I think it was. The guy got coffee grounds and fish.

Well, once you put that trash on the street, it's public domain. So you obviously have to shred your information. You have to lock up your mailbox. And, you know, while the people, the identity thieves, are the biggest part of the problem, it's the paper that comes in the mail and goes out the trash trash that also lends to the problem. You also have—

How do you lock the mailbox if the mailman, the post office carrier, I mean, how do they get in the mailbox if I lock it?

You could buy a locking mailbox at any major, you know, Home Depot or any major retailer that, you know, sells locking mailboxes. That's one of the first steps. But then you also have to consider that the company you work for, the human resource officer, he or she, they have access to all kinds of personal identifying information. So even if you're locking up your mailbox, that may not protect you. Plus, criminal hackers, you know, have access to data when they are accessing unprotected networks, you know, systems that have holes in them, flaws, that aren't properly updated. So all of these retailers that have your information, major corporations that aren't investing— the ones that aren't investing in the technology to protect our data, well, they're the ones that should be held accountable.

All right, well, so I guess the bottom line is let's look at every statement, we rip up stuff before we put it out on the street, because as you say, garbage is— it could be public property, it's public domain. Good thing we know about that. Robert Siciliano, thanks for the tips today, and we'll watch out for them. Jane. Thank you.