Students who started university or college this week might be worried about having their iPod or laptop stolen, but how many are taking steps to protect their identity?
Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in Canada and although there are no statistics specific to students, young adults are vulnerable for a number of reasons: they frequent social networking sites and aren’t always aware that they need to safeguard their personal information.
“Living in a residence or sharing public computers, you increase the risk,” says Lee Dunn, vice-president and chief information security officer at the Bank of Montreal.
Campus computers, used by many students over the course of a day to pay bills and check emails, are not necessarily secure. If the computer does not have updated anti-virus software or encryption protection, your personal details could get scooped up by a fraudster, Ms. Dunn says.
Living in a residence or sharing public computers, you increase the risk. — Lee Dunn, Bank of Montreal.
Some tips on how to avoid identity theft are obvious and common-sense, such as don’t open a tab at the bar with your credit card and leave it there overnight. Don’t leave your bank account details lying around in your dorm room. And don’t reveal your PIN number or let anyone borrow your debit or credit card to buy a slice of pizza, even if they promise to pay you right back.
“If someone wants to borrow your card, assume that they have a nefarious reason for doing so. Never lend it to anyone,” says Ted McMeekin, Ontario’s minister of government and consumer services. “And don’t carry ID you don’t need around with you, like your SIN or your birth certificate.”
Another way to safeguard your information is to come up with strong passwords. Ms. Dunn suggests choosing one that is composed of a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols, which makes it harder to crack. Don’t write down or share your passwords, which should be different for banking, university, computer and social networking accounts. “I recommend not using the same password for online banking as you would for Hotmail or Facebook,” she says.
Michael Stanfield, the chief executive officer and founder of Intersections Inc., a Virginia-based provider of consumer and corporate identity risk management services, says that today’s students may not realize that the social networking sites they’ve essentially grown up with expose way too much of their personal information.
But the danger of posting details like your address, birthdate and phone number on social networking sites are real. Hackers on Facebook have broken into accounts posing as friends of users, sending spam that directs them to websites that steal personal information and spread viruses.
College and university students are also more susceptible to identity theft because they may be first-time bank account holders, having just signed up for their first credit card or for online banking. “They’ve never had to balance a checkbook or pay bills online and they are simply not aware of the identity threats that exist today,” Mr. Stanfield says.
In order to make sure you have not been targeted, check your bank and credit card statements regularly and immediately notify your bank if you notice anything out of the ordinary.
Banks will generally reimburse you any stolen money (depending on the circumstances) but the process is a time-consuming hassle that includes reams of paperwork, investigating which transactions are fraudulent, ordering new cards and re-doing PINs.
Ms. Dunn, who herself was a victim of identity-theft, says it is a “terrible feeling” knowing that someone out there has accessed your personal information. “I know when it happened to me, I felt violated.”
Check out this Canadian Bankers Association release on how to protect your personal information. Also useful, the CBA released these fraud prevention tips for youth last fall.
For the Ontario goverment's website on identity theft, click here.
