I was
going through some old assignments last week getting them ready to present them
to my instructor prior to graduation when I came upon an assignment from my
undergrad days... The instructor wanted the class to go through our garbage and
look for pieces of anything that might be useful to a dumpster diver or social
engineer. At first, I thought it to be a lesson in futility since I was sure
that I never throw personal data away. I
was mistaken….
Here are excerpts from
the assignment:
I
thought this would be a no brainer for me, look in my trash and see that I have
absolutely nothing that could identify me or give a person an inkling about who
I am. Uhmm not true…
Things that
I found are listed below.
1. Credit card advertisement, it was
ripped up in several pieces but still had enough data on it to give me away.
2. My Flight boarding pass from SFO to
Mexico City. I wasn’t the one who threw
this out, so it must have been my wife.
3. Half of my itinerary from Expedia,
including the hotel name. Again, wife.
4. A utility bill.
I was concerned,
I am usually very careful about what I toss out; I usually burn or shred it, or
dowse it in H2O and put it in the mulch pile.
(haikudeck.com)
I asked
my lovely wife if she had thrown the data away and she looked shocked and said
she didn’t even realize she had done it.
I’m sure it was a mistake since I am always on my family to not take any
chances and always toss everything into the shred bin even if they don’t think it is
of consequence. This bothers me a lot
since on garbage days, you will occasionally see people walking through the
neighborhood looking into the garbage cans hoping to find recyclables, or are
they?
Looking
back on this experiment, I see that it is easy to forget and just toss stuff
out. This should never happen since
people make a good living sifting through garbage then stealing your identity…
In an article
about identity theft on the FTC website, statistics are given for 2015,“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”. The graph helps
to illustrate the point.
(FTC.gov)
Identity
theft is a big issue and is only getting worse. Protect yourself and your loved
ones and make sure you keep your data safe. And don’t do what my family did and
throw out personal papers. Shred them…
Here are a few good
websites to learn more about identity theft.
IdentityTheft.gov Report
identity theft and get a recovery plan.
FBI.gov
– Identity theft information.
Identitytheft.info - Identity
Theft Victim Statistics by Rob Douglas
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