Twice Bitten: Acts of Stupidity Can Lead to Identity Theft

Chris Soghoian has an excellent post in his C/Net Surveillance State blog:

"A British TV presenter has learned the hard way that identity theft is serious, and in the process, become the joke of the moment for privacy bloggers. More importantly, this is the second time in just one year that such a thing has happened."

Soghoian wrote:

"Jeremy Clarkson, host of the BBC show Top Gear, recently wrote an article for the U.K.'s Sunday Times in which he ridiculed the uproar that had occurred after the British government admitted to losing two compact discs containing the personal information on 25 million people. To prove his point that there was no risk of financial fraud for those consumers, he published his bank account details, and instructions on how to locate his address."

Clarkson quickly changed his opinion of identity theft after an identity thief used Clarkson's data to create an automatic bank transfer to the Diabetes UK charity.

Recently, a friend in Oakland called to ask me about Lifelock. Soghoian has clearly "connected the dots," since he also wrote about Lifelock in the same post:

"Todd Davis is the CEO of LifeLock, a company that offers a mostly useless $10 per month identity theft protection service. In an effort to eat his own dog food, and promote his company's service, Mr. Davis includes his social security number in all of the company's advertisements--see here. A full page ad in this week's USA Today had his SSN listed in big letters. Making a mockery of LifeLock's identity theft protections, a Texas man in 2006 was able to secure a $500 payday loan with Mr. Davis' social security number."

If you are considering Lifelock for a credit monitoring service, I also encourage you to read this Phoenix New Times article before making a decision.