Be
glad we aren’t Florida! On the upside, Florida gets a ton more sun than we ever
do. But on the downside, they ranked at the top for identity
theft per capita in 2010.
However, the Federal
Trade Commission does say we rank 17 in the
nation and reports that the top three identity theft types in our state are
credit card fraud, phone or utilities fraud, and bank fraud.
We
must be doing something right, though, because we’re getting farther away from
the top of that infamous list every year:
Year
|
ID Theft per
capita rank
|
2010
|
17
|
2009
|
15
|
2008
|
14
|
2007
|
13
|
2006
|
9
|
2005
|
7
|
That’s
largely due to smart measures passed by the Legislature in recent years to
prevent and fight identity theft, as well as protect its victims. These are
some of those measures:
- Senate Bill 5418: identity theft victims can place a security freeze on a credit report, thus keeping credit bureaus from releasing information without permission.
- Senate Bill 5939: police and sheriff's departments must take reports from identity theft victims.
- House Bill 1012: it is illegal for anyone to transmit software to another computer without the owner's knowledge or to falsely entice someone to download software.
- House Bill 1888: includes phishing scams in the state's spam statute. Phishing is when identity thieves try to trick consumers out of personal information by sending bogus e-mails that request that information online.
- House Bill 3144: the Department of Information Services creates a consumer protection web site that includes an entire section on identity theft.
- Senate Bill 5826: all residents can place a security freeze on their credit reports, not just ID theft victims. The law includes an easy ‘thaw’ mechanism to temporarily lift a freeze within 15 minutes of a request.
- Senate Bill 5878: law enforcement must take an ID theft report regardless of where the crime may have been committed.
- House Bill 1127: credit card and debit card numbers on electronically printed receipts must be truncated.
- House
Bill 1145: specifies that mail theft is a crime when a person steals mail
addressed to three or more mailboxes and has a minimum of 10 pieces of stolen
mail:
But the incidence of ID theft in our state has also
reduced because Washingtonians are getting better at protecting their
identities.
To learn more about
how to be your own information
bodyguard, go to the Better
Business Bureau’s website on ID theft prevention, or to the Attorney General’s
website.
To read this blog post
in Spanish, please
go here.
