identity theft

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The process, which will cost about $89,000, should take several weeks, she said.

The paper versions of the 2 million documents containing sensitive information are still available for public viewing at the courthouse, as required by law.

Worries that online court records could be an easy source for ID thieves have been voiced for years, but county officials say this is the first major case that has come to their attention.

“It’s one of the vulnerabilities we all face,” Anderson said.

Five years ago, county clerk offices statewide rebelled after an attorney general opinion said they must redact Social Security numbers from court records, including those online. Offices froze in confusion, and some shut down. A week later, the attorney general’s office, citing complaints from legislators, rescinded its opinion.

Then the Legislature enacted a law permitting people to ask that their own Social Security numbers (but no other identifying information) be removed from paper court records as long as the requesters know the document, page and volume number.

County officials say only a few people each year do that, because most don’t know what’s in court records from old cases. The problem is that, for decades, sensitive data have been routinely used in court documents to legally identify the parties involved.

Some, such as County District Clerk Tom Wilder, want state law changed to allow a “sensitive data sheet” to be included in court filings but available for use only by the parties and court officials; it would never see the light of day in public paper files or online.

Because of the grand scope of this criminal investigation, lawmakers may look at requiring online records statewide to be scrubbed in a way similar to what Tarrant County is doing.

The law did not require Garcia to pull records and remove personal information. “It’s something we want to do in our office to protect our constituents,” she said. “The minute I found out [about the investigation], my administration — we moved on it.”

County officials know little about the criminal investigation, but Albuquerque police spokeswoman Tasia Martinez told Watchdog Nation that officers are immersed in writing a report detailing what happened to the 232 victims.

About 40 are thought to live in Tarrant County. The office has sent letters to victims, though some have been returned with bad addresses.

Several New Mexicans have been charged with theft.

Watson says thieves opened accounts in her name and ran up large charges. Her sensitive information, a detective told her, was culled from her 1999 divorce records.

One of the people arrested in the case told police that she searched divorces on the Tarrant County website until she found papers with Social Security numbers, then copied down the information, according to a police report.

Watson filed a redaction form with the county to remove her Social Security number from paper records. With the online cleanup under way, too, anyone who tries to access her divorce records will get the message, “Access is denied to that item.”

That’s all she ever wanted.

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Want to protect yourself from ID theft? Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded in a 2012 edition, the book won two national book awards for social change.

Filed Under: Announcements, Column Tagged With: county clerk, Fort Worth, id theft, identity theft, New Mexico crime ring, public records, Tarrant County

Pharmacy staffers seeking your personal info put you at ID theft risk

April 17, 2012 by Dave Lieber

My pet peeve: Sometimes when I’m sitting in a car repair shop or a car wash, I hear another customer talking loudly on a cellphone to a pharmacist. The customer orders medicine and blurts out name, address and date of birth.

Why don’t people step outside and talk in private? Don’t they realize that anyone else listening could use that information to engage in identity theft?

Apparently, I’m not the only one with this kind of pet peeve. As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, for Christopher Dills, a retired high school journalism teacher, his sore spot is standing in line at a Walgreens pharmacy in Mansfield, where he lives, and being asked to give the same information. Recently, he got so upset that he complained to a store manager.

He says he understands the need for such information to make sure people get the right medicine. But he told the manager that he heard the name, address and Social Security numbers of two women in front of him.

“I refused to give my information out loud when I was called,” he said. “I explained firmly but nicely that I and anybody else could be at the homes of the ‘victims’ before they were because Walgreens made it possible.”

He asked the manager why an identification card showing the information wasn’t acceptable. He was told that those cards sometimes contain incorrect information and that answering orally was corporate policy.

He asked Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation, “Can you help stop this practice of needlessly putting people at risk?”

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I can, but first, let me share Walgreens’ response. It took me 11 days to get an answer from the company, and I had to send five pleading e-mails. But when a spokeswoman wrote back, she said the company had retrained the Mansfield staff in response to the complaint.

“We are committed to patient privacy,” Vivika Panagiotakakos wrote. “If a patient or caregiver would like to pick up medication, we do ask for patient information to help verify that the right prescription is given to the right customer.”

She said patients can ask to move to a private area. “In addition, many of our pharmacies do have signs near the counter to help promote patient privacy so customers can feel comfortable speaking to pharmacy staff.

“We have retrained our Mansfield staff about steps they can take to ensure patient privacy and making sure that only one customer is near the counter at a time.”

Another Walgreens pharmacy customer, Paul Diviney of Fort Worth, tells me he is so concerned about keeping his information private that he uses only the drive-through lane closest to the window so that when he speaks to the staff, other drivers can’t hear him.

CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis told me corporate policy for CVS stores is to ask for private information softly so others can’t hear. He says the information is sought at a separate window, which is not in the immediate pickup area. “Privacy is one reason we set it up like that,” he said.

Jay Foley, a founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said information as simple as a name, address and date of birth is “enough to get the ball rolling” for an identity thief.

He told the story of a case in a California pharmacy several years ago involving a woman who regularly roamed the aisles. Pharmacy staffers thought she was lonely. “She’d talk to people and seemed like a pretty harmless lady,” he said.

Turns out she wasn’t so harmless. When she was arrested on charges of identity theft, police found her carrying the names of 18 people and their Social Security numbers, all of whom were customers of that pharmacy.

Foley’s solution: “If I were a customer, what I would do is take a slip of paper and write the answers down and show it to the clerk. Then I’d take that piece of paper home and shred it.”

Panagiotakakos said that would work in Walgreens stores.

Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Filed Under: Column Tagged With: identity theft, personal information, pharmacist, pharmacy

Governments are cause of half the records lost in data breaches this year

July 16, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Let’s all stand and cheer for Judy Yacio, a retired Texas school principal who struck a blow to stop identity theft. She exposed a flaw in the Teacher Retirement System of Texas that could make it easy for identity thieves to steal her personal banking information.

Government data breaches, in which personal information is accidentally released or stolen, are growing. This year, ineptitude on the part of federal, state and local governments was responsible for nearly half of all personal records lost in data breaches, according to statistics kept by the Identity Theft Resource Center. The rest happened in businesses, especially in the banking and medical communities.

In the spring of 2011, the Texas comptroller’s office announced that, for about a year, it had inadvertently exposed Social Security numbers and other data about 3.5 million Texans on a state website accessible to the public. The breach, probably the largest in Texas history, included names and addresses, and sometimes birth dates and driver’s license information. That’s enough for any ID thief to wipe some out financially.

The Texas attorney general’s office and the FBI launched a criminal investigation. Several employees in the comptroller’s office were fired.

In June 2011, 4,900 current and former workers at the state Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services were told that their personal information was exposed.

“Government has to be more careful,” Yacio says.

Ridiculous picture courtesy of identitytheftprotection.net

She knows. As readers of the Dave Lieber Watchdog column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram first learned, after Yacio switched the bank account to which her retirement check was to be directly deposited, she got a call from her credit union telling her that it had received a letter from TRS to confirm the change. But her personal information, the credit union told her, was clearly visible through the TRS envelope.

TRS had used a window-style envelope. Yacio’s name, address and account number were visible through the front window. Anyone who handled the letter could use that information to steal from her.

Yacio flipped out. She contacted the state comptroller’s office, which directed her to TRS. She also complained to state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth. A staffer contacted TRS on her behalf, too.

“Window envelopes are a bad idea when sending sensitive information, as some things show that we don’t want others to see,” the former principal scolds. “People are getting sloppier and sloppier in protecting our personal information. And we wonder why identity theft has increased. The state needs to be more careful. Period!”

Her plan was to push the issue: “I rightly raised a ruckus,” she says. “People need not sit back and accept what is being done.”

She told TRS leaders on the phone, “Guys, you’ve got to quit using window envelopes. Window envelopes are very dangerous with this kind of information.”

TRS officials did something she did not expect: They listened to her.

TRS spokeswoman Rhonda Price told Watchdog Nation: “We can confirm that we have changed our procedures.” Letters with personal information to banks and credit unions “will now be mailed utilizing mailing labels so that the content of the envelope cannot be seen.

“Our longer-term solution will be to have the sensitive information taken off [the letters], but that will require programming changes. We believe our interim solution will resolve the issue until the programming changes can be made.”

Yacio praises TRS for its quick recovery.

Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, says breaches caused by government are worse than those caused by private businesses.

“As a consumer, I chose which businesses I will share my personal information with. I don’t have that luxury with government.

“If I want a driver’s license, I have to give my Social Security number. I pay taxes, and I have to use my Social Security number. If I want unemployment, I have to give my Social Security number.

“Government for a long time has allowed the Social Security number to be the de facto piece of identifying information about each of us. The downside is that government has never really learned how to control the information.”

That’s why Yacio’s battle cry is noteworthy. When any vulnerability is found in the protection of personal data, raise a ruckus.

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Dave Lieber shows Americans how to fight back against corporate deceptions in his wonderful book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong.

The book focuses sharply on how to protect against identity theft and defend yourself if you’ve fallen victim to this. Are you tired of losing time, money and aggravation to all the assaults on our wallets? Learn how to fight back with ease — and win. Get the book here.

Read The Watchdog Nation manifesto here!

Filed Under: Column Tagged With: data breach, data protection, identity theft, privacy rights, security breach

Open Letter to the U.S. Chief Postal Inspector

July 8, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Memo to: Guy Cottrell

U.S. Chief Postal Inspector

The recipient: Guy Cottrell

From: Watchdog Nation

The sender: Newspaper columnist Dave Lieber

Dear Chief Inspector:

I write on behalf of thousands of people whose mail has been stolen from blue postal collection boxes in North Texas. My city, Fort Worth, leads the nation in mailbox thefts, according to records I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Sir, an incident last month shows how the crime-reporting system, such as it is, is faulty — and how innocent people are unnecessarily hurt because of a lack of information. You’re the leader of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. You can easily fix this.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram // Dave Lieber Watchdog column already know, for more than two years, I have publicly shared information about mailbox thefts in the region, mostly because authorities refuse to do so. The postal inspectors who work for you say they cannot release date-and-place details of mail thefts from public boxes, at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office. Providing such information, they say, would jeopardize their criminal investigations.

Others, including me, believe that people have a right to know when something as important as their mail may have been stolen so they can work quickly to prevent identity theft.

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Case in point: a June 3 incident at the Trinity River post office on Oak Park Lane in Fort Worth.

A reader tipped me that the two outdoor blue boxes were missing. Where did they go?

When I called the post office, an employee who answered the phone told me that nothing had happened.

Then I called the U.S. Postal Service, and spokesman Sam Bolen told me that the mailboxes were defaced and taken out for repainting.

“We have nothing to indicate mail was stolen from these collection boxes,” Bolen said.

Well, I do.

Watchdog Nation took this photo in late 2009 of a mailbox break-in outside the Haltom City, Texas post office.

After I reported the conflicting statements by postal employees, I heard from two people who placed mail in Trinity River post office collection boxes June 3. They say their mail never arrived.

Both told me that they, like me, had tried to learn what happened and couldn’t get a straight answer.

Elaine Stoltz says checks she mailed were stolen from the box. She figured it out when the checks didn’t arrive at their destinations. Then someone walked into her bank with a temporary driver’s license in her name and withdrew $1,500 from her bank account. Stoltz believes that the thief used information from the stolen mail. Her bank covered the loss.

A Fort Worth man told me that his mailed checks also never arrived. Then someone used a fake check with his name to buy $290 worth of merchandise from Walmart.

The man said that when he called the postal inspector’s office to complain, an employee “tells me on the phone that as far as they could determine, no mail was missing.”

I must ask: How do they know? (Apparently, they don’t.)

That same man then stopped a mail carrier on his route. When asked, the carrier said, “We’re really not supposed to talk about it, but something did happen.”

Chief Inspector Cottrell, the solution is one that is used in other parts of the country. I’ve found that in other areas, authorities do release details of mailbox thefts. This helps victims begin cleaning up identity theft problems sooner rather than later.

Please change the policy in North Texas. Allow all public mailbox thefts to be reported. Be more forthcoming.

There’s no doubt that the postal inspectors in our region are good at what they do. In fiscal 2010, the Fort Worth office reported 195 arrests and 192 convictions related to mail and identity theft. That’s among the best in the nation, but then again, they have a lot to work with.

Tarrant County had 60 thefts in 2009 and more than 80 last year (and those don’t include thefts from private mailboxes).

Certainly, we have a special problem here and things are getting worse before they get better.

Thank you,

Dave Lieber

On behalf of Watchdog Nation

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation.

Filed Under: Column Tagged With: identity theft, mail theft, mailbox theft, postal, USPIS, USPS

How to protect yourself from mailbox theft

February 23, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Those blue postal collection boxes outside of post offices are sitting ducks for identity thieves. Getting mail out of them is as easy as licking an envelope.

Crimes occur but information is scarce

Yet the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection service don’t easily release the information about mailbox break-ins to the public. Rarely, do you see these break-ins listed in police crime reports. The only way to get the information is through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, the problem of thefts from blue U.S. Postal Service collection boxes apparently hasn’t gotten any better in the past year. Watchdog Nation took a sample of its home Fort Worth postal district.

Mostly unreported crimes

A year ago, the Fort Worth postal district reported 60 mailbox thefts in 13 months. But in the past 11 months, there have been more than 80 incidents in the district, which includes Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene and Decatur, too.

Most of the thefts are in Fort Worth and Arlington. (See the 3-page government release here.)

Fort Worth boxes were hit almost 40 times, with the crimes scattered throughout the city.

Arlington had 28 reported incidents. One blue collection box at 300 E. South St. was apparently hit eight times.

Other cities hit: Amarillo with five, Abilene with three, River Oaks and Euless with two each, and one each in Haslet, Haltom City, Watauga, Grand Prairie, Lubbock and Decatur.

Watchdog Nation took this photo in late 2009 of a mailbox break-in outside the Haltom City, Texas post office.

Watchdog Nation methodology

I asked for a list of all reported incidents of theft, vandalism and tampering involving the blue collection boxes in the last 11 months of 2010.

The Postal Inspection Service cautioned me about the data it sent me:

“These reports are the raw, unverified data provided by USPS employees. Some of the entries provided contain duplicate reports of possible thefts or vandalism, as well as unverified dates of possible thefts or vandalism.” (I eliminated the obvious duplicates.)

I asked for vandalism and tampering crimes, too, because it’s often hard to prove any mail was stolen, but a good indicator is whether a mailbox was vandalized or tampered with.

The data matches anecdotal evidence gleaned from readers in recent months. An Arlington man notified the Star-Telegram in December that mailbox break-ins in his city were “rampant.” A Fort Worth man contacted me in November about thefts at a collection box at the post office near South Hulen Street at 4450 Oak Park Lane (the list includes two incidents there in October).

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How bad is the problem?

John Breyault of the National Consumer League suggests that before you mail anything, you check the condition of a mailbox. “Is it in good repair? Is the lock on it secure? Does it look like it’s been tampered with somehow?”

He also offers an excellent idea: Check periodically with your residential carrier about mailbox thefts in your area.

A mailbox security expert tells me that along with thefts from mailboxes at homes, thefts at collection boxes remain a major problem nationwide.

Background

“It’s basically a crime that’s not being prosecuted because there’s too much of it to deal with,” says Michael Johnston, owner of USMailboxes. “The way I see it and experience it, it has increased tremendously in the last few years. It started out as a way for thieves to get drug money. Now the recession has made it worse.”

Ten years ago, Johnston was hired by the post office to strengthen the blue collection boxes in his home state of Oregon. “We went around and put those security bars on to help make it harder to break into without a key,” he said. “We also put a heavier lock that was harder to pick. And they put special locking nuts on the bolts in the ground so they couldn’t easily be taken off.

“I don’t know how to make them stronger. I don’t think they know either. The biggest problem up here now is they throw a chain around it and yank it out of the ground.”

The blue collection boxes are especially popular, he says, because they contain more mail, especially bill payments containing individual checks. Thieves can use the name, address, account and bank routing numbers on the checks for identity theft.

“The post office would like to remove the blue boxes,” Johnston says. “They would like to take them all off the streets and make people go to the post office or use their own mailbox to send mail out.”

What should you do?

If that’s true, the post office won’t state that publicly. In a statement to The Watchdog this week, Postal Inspection Service spokesman Michael J. Romano writes, “The Postal Service employs crime prevention countermeasures for collection box thefts, but for obvious reasons, this information is law enforcement sensitive and is not released to the public.

“We maintain that the U.S. mail is a very safe and secure way of conducting commerce with close to 600 million pieces of mail and packages successfully delivered daily.”

Still, the post office warns, “When possible, customers should avoid placing mail in a blue collection box after the last posted collection time or on a day mail is not scheduled to be picked up. If they must deposit mail during that time, they should use the lobby drop inside a post office.”

The boxes do not provide this information to consumers. But probably they should with signs. If the boxes are not completely safe, the people using them should know. Mail inside is a sitting target. That’s what the numbers show.

File your own request

If you want to file a freedom of information act request, here’s how you do it:

CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR
US POSTAL SERVICE
475 L’ENFANT PLAZA SW RM 3100
WASHINGTON DC 20260-2100

[Date]

FOIA REQUEST

Dear FOIA Officer:

Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of a listing of all reported incidents of:

– theft of mail from…

– vandalism of mailbox…

– tampering with ….

the blue collection mailboxes located outside all post offices, stations, substations, etc. in the [YOUR DISTRICT] from [GIVE DATES] to the date of this letter, Dec. 31, 2010.

I agree to pay reasonable duplication fees for the processing of this request, but ask that you first alert me to the charges so I may know before any work is done. You may call me about this at xxx-xxx-xxxx or e-mail to xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx.

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material. I, of course, reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to deny a waiver of fees.

I look forward to your reply within 20 business days, as the statute requires. Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

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