ID Theft is up 34%- What can we do?

The number of U.S. households and businesses that fell victim to some kind of identity theft rose to 8.6 Million in 2010, costing the victims about $13.3 Billion, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics said Wednesday.

Each person or business who reported a dollar or more in identity theft lost an average of $8,200 in 2010. About 7% of all households were victimized and 11% of businesses were victims as well, which is up from 5.5% in 2005. From 2005 to 2010, the misuse of an existing credit card account was the fastest-growing type of identity theft. Reports of credit card information stolen from businesses and people’s trash, and from legitimate card readers by devices attached to machines such as ATMs that record the information for use later also made up a large portion of the losses. Many of these cases involve relatives, roommates, or in the case of businesses, an employee stealing information from people close to them. Also, Internet shopping can put more people at risk.

We recently had one of our business customers that fell prey to identity theft. The business’ credit card was stolen from their mailbox before the owner could retrieve the mail. By the time they found out about it, this theft had fraudulently bought over $22,000 worth of merchandise. As business owners, what can you do about this growing problem? What safeguards are available to you? Here are a few:

1) Make sure when you order something with your business credit card that it is on a secure data line. There are ways to check this before ordering.

2) Be aware of charges to the credit card, and have a limit set where the card company will automatically contact you when a purchase is made over that limit.

3) Many credit cards are stolen through the mail, with thieves taking the cards as they are sitting in the business’ mail box. Make sure you have a P.O. Box for all that type of mail to be sent to. NEVER put your actual physical address on the return addresses part of the envelope- only your P.O. Box number.

4) Use common sense- be involved in the use of your company credit card, and limit access to the card to a bare minimum.

5) Make sure you have purchased crime coverage for your business. If should include Blanket Employee Dishonesty and theft of property.

As business owner’s, we must all be aware of the consequences of identity theft. If can be devastating.

Bobby Bland PWCA, CIC
Vice President

Commercial Risk Service