New News (to me anyway)
Here are some recent stories I found interesting that intersect with practice:
ID Theft is on the Rise
The FTC received 490,000 Identity Theft complaints in 2015. This represents a “47 percent increase over the prior year, and the Department of Justice estimates that 17.6 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2014.”
College Students and ID Theft
According to IDT911, here are three types of Identity Theft that College Students are particularly vulnerable to:
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Criminal identity theft: College students are particularly susceptible to criminal identity theft, considering they live near so many strangers. If someone in your dorm or apartment building uses your identity at the time of arrest—simply because they know your name, apartment number or other minor details—you could be left facing charges for the unresolved issue. If this person happens to have borrowed or stolen your driver’s license, perhaps because you’re old enough to purchase alcohol and they’re not, then they may even be able to provide your complete identity to the police. You never find out about the incident, and therefore you never resolve it until a warrant is issued for your arrest.
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Medical identity theft: Much like criminal identity theft, college students have to safeguard their identities against people who want to use them to secure medical care. It might be something that seems harmless on the surface. Maybe, a girl in your building needs a way to access birth control without alerting her parents. But it can also be something very serious, such as someone stealing your identity in order to get a prescription for controlled substances. Not only can your medical record permanently reflect care that you never received, but you could find yourself involved in a crime if those prescriptions are then used for illegal distribution.
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Internet takeover: One of the scariest identity theft crimes for young people to envision just might be internet takeover. While the other forms of the crime are alarming, they can more easily be resolved. But when someone takes over your technology or gains access to your accounts, the fear of long-term damage is very real. They may just lock you out of your accounts for the fun of it, but it could lead to expulsion and lost job opportunities if a hacker takes over your university account and deletes your work, or accesses your Facebook account and uses it to post hate speech, embarrassing photos, or other potentially harmful content.
The Rich are more Worried about ID Theft than Terrorism or Illness
Nearly three-fourths of high net worth investors are worried about identity theft, ranking it higher than terrorism (65 percent) or a major illness (56 percent), according to a new Morgan Stanley Investor Pulse Poll.