Invitations to Identity Theft

wait why were you watching the news on dvr?

Because it was easier than building an antenna out of tin foil? I don't understand the question.

I'm imagining nabisco in his underground lair watching the news like Michael Keaton in Batman. Explanation for #2 is, yes, they are really dumb - even if the cards have been cancelled, the replacement cards will have the exact same details except for the expiry date.

was it one of those giant checks? i would imagine that the numbers on those giant checks are fake

http://www.gtrnews.com/images/2065.jpg

those are a pain to cash

lol i was just going to post chick-fil-a pic

can you order checkbooks of giant checks

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/checkmcmanus.JPG

weird. every giant check i looked at on the GIS didn't have #'s

It was a normal-sized active personal check! They showed it for like a half-second on the news, apparently not considering that plenty of people would be watching through DVR cable boxes and could rewind.

(P.S. I understand Bell's question now: no, obviously I didn't tape the news on DVR, but the digital cable means you can pause and go back and stuff for "live" TV.)

Snoball -- wait: when you cancel and replace a card, they also tend to change the number itself, slightly. But just the name and signature on a canceled card seem like something you wouldn't exactly want posted up in a store somewhere!

ok sorry i am ignorant to the ways of digital cable. though i do enjoy the old io digital cable reggaeton commercial (but not the new crappy one)

We learned the winner of last night's "Hell's Kitchen" finale as they went to their first break by pausing the DVR in the same manner.

I used to wonder about those "Dialing for Dollars" segments they'd have on the noon news. "Well, Edna Parsons of Delight isn't home right now, so we'll just send her a case of Coke". --- well, hell, time to get the burgle sack out and hit Edna's place!

Yeah, I've spent the last decade watching PBS on rabbit ears, so I used to be a bit of an amazed caveman about the DVR options. (I also couldn't get it through my head that I didn't have to wait until a commercial to leave the room, or that I wasn't going to "miss" anything if my attention got called elsewhere.) It's weird how quickly you can get accustomed to it and rely on it, though: now I'm pause something I'm watching, go out, come back two hours later, and be actively annoyed that it hit the two-hour buffer point and lost everything.

Also I'll try and fast-forward commercials on live television and get all disappointed when I can't.

"We can put a man on the moon, but I can't fast-forward into television from the future? What is this, a third-world country?"

It was a normal-sized active personal check! They showed it for like a half-second on the news, apparently not considering that plenty of people would be watching through DVR cable boxes and could rewind.

-- nabisco, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 3:51 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

how many identity thieves are watching the news on dvr???

invitations to identity theft: using a 7-11 ATM, being in the military, using microsoft internet explorer

invitations to identity theft: using a 7-11 ATM

??

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/the-associated.html

http://atmmarketplace.com/article.php?id=10096&na=1

I would really like "identity theft" to stop being used as a catch-all for all types of wire fraud btw and just use it for actual cases of being impersonated to apply for services e.g. ugly betty's dad etc etc; if somebody gets my CC or bank info and disabuses me of a few thousand dollars I still retain my "identity"

hmm extremely disturbing

That is a good point, Tom; I'm mostly just referring to these people getting ripped off. Or, actually, "stupid things people might do with your account numbers." But I liked the assonance, sue me.

how many identity thieves are watching the news on dvr???

I would totally expect thieving account-emptiers to be among the first people to get flat-screen TVs and cable boxes. Actually, staring at the numbers for an account someone had just casually written a huge reward check out of, I was kinda tempted to become a thief myself. I wrote down the info somewhere, just because I found it amazing that I could!

i dont think that makes you an identify thief, just a nicholson baker style detritus obsessive

Tom, you're a mod, you're totally welcome to delete the word "identity" from the title!

Ethan, it's uncharacteristically classist of you to presume that only law-abiding citizens watch local news! In any case, I would totally not want the face of any of my checks appearing on TV in a market of at least 10 million people in a city whose cable providers issue DVR cable boxes to most subscribers.

dont think it's classist to say my experience with petty criminals is that they're not a bunch of moriarty style masterminds and that nearly everyone smart enough to realize the scam you're talking about is also smart enough not to do it - it's why stories about people who do shit like that (like the guy who gamed "press your luck") are so uncommonly novel

tell us about your experience with petty criminals

It doesn't exactly take a Moriarty-style mastermind to notice numbers on a check and hit "rewind," though, does it? I'd have figured some schemer out there, smart or not, would try to do something with it, even if it was in a dumb-assed way that got them immediately caught.

E.g., use routing/account numbers to order a bunch of crap to someone else's house thinking you can get away with it, immediately get caught and look stupid, etc.

the thing you're missing is that most thieves already have a planned and orderly way they go about scraping for such information and don't need to watch the tv news on the off chance they might just catch some poor bastard's checkbook open with the numbers all readable

as far as non-professional criminal types go, see ethan's post

but this is still an interesting thread!

http://attrition.org/dataloss/

millar said what i was gonna post - serious professional bank fraud dudes have reliable bank fraud systems set up & aren't going to go looking for check routing #s on their dvrs any more than the owner of the liquor store across the street is gonna start wandering around the suburbs looking for underage house parties he can sell kegs to

"what's your business plan for 2009, ted?" "i figured i would just drive around and hope i find somebody who wants to buy some beer form me"

a good rule for any kind of money-making schemes, including but not limited to criminal money-making schemes, is that if you come up with it while watching tv and can't think of anyone else who has been successful at it then it's probably not a good money-making scheme

Dudes I'm not talking about "professional bank fraud," I'm talking about everyday dopes and/or low-lifes watching TV and then going "oh hey wait, could we get away with using that?" Kind of along the lines of those teenagers who realize one day that they can scam themselves a few hundred dollars selling non-existent things on eBay before anyone notices.

I mean when you say "some poor bastard's checkbook" the "poor" part kinda implies what I'm saying, which is that there's a decent chance someone out there might try and get something out of it.

Hahaha like for instance I have a #3 involving myself:

3. I'm talking to my bank's customer service while running late for something, hop into a cab, absent-mindedly continue identifying myself to bank customer service until I notice the cabbie's cell, which had been on speaker, is now pointed at me, and the person on the other end is silent. So now, being a moron, I have to get out and change a couple things about my account, because it seemed like the cabbie was opportunistic enough to say "hey there's an idiot in the back seat saying all his bank information out loud, shut up and grab a pen."

xpost - Ethan if crime were limited to schemes that were actually good ideas there would be a lot less crime!

successful crime is limited to schemes that are actually good ideas

http://www.biology-online.org/images/darwin_finches.jpgp

wau at #3

Haha okay now I know you're wrong because you're arguing weird: no one in the history of mankind has ever been like "oh shit someone drained a bunch of money from my account -- oh but wait it was an idiotic scheme and they'll totally get caught, so the whole thing is absolutely no sweat or hassle for me in the least and I don't mind at all"

okay you guys need to work on getting in the same book and then maybe you'll have a chance of getting on the same page

Yeah, #3 was a real low point in my having anything approaching a brain. I almost had to hand it to the cabbie for being all slick and just aiming his phone in my general direction.

i have had dudes steal from my bank account 2wice & my bank set that shit right in like 36 hours??? i use bank of america so maybe theyre hardcore bout thangs but it was no hassle

fuckin bank of america mysteriously let someone withdraw money from my account (they may or may not have been nationsbank at that time). it got solved but they aren't hardcore

The "successful" part of "successful crime" is pretty critical, Nabisco; crimes that end up with the criminal getting caught tend to be looked on as bad ideas, whereas crimes where the perp gets away with it are at the very least a good idea that first time.

^^^^^^^^^^^

believe it or not i think a lot of criminals take "will i get caught for this" into account, especially for dvr identify theft and not crackhead bulglaries

I think my point, Dan, is that plenty of people engage in crappy unsuccessful not-entirely-smart crimes (and get caught), especially when it comes to trying to get away with stuff like this. (Like consider the number of dopey kids who get their first retail jobs and start thinking they've got the perfect way to copy and use customers' card numbers.) Yeah, the kind of person who'd copy account numbers off a TV screen and actually try to use them is probably the kind of person who'd get caught doing it pretty easily, but I would still definitely not want my checks sitting there un-blurred on TV in the biggest city in the country, 'cause I'd figure some asshead somewhere would fuck with it. Even with banks having better fraud protection these days, I'd rather not deal with it in the first place, and I'm assuming that not a one of you would be all like "sure, flash a close-up of my check on TV, I'm fairly confident nobody would bother trying anything."

i think you should go for it

I mean, am I wrong? Would y'all seriously be like "no, I think it's pretty safe to put my bank account number on the news for a second?"

Anyway this argument is weird and I'm not sure I get it, I gotta run

everyone's otm-ness is being wasted on this argument

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/L_IMAGE.10543a66c1a.93.88.fa.7c.62670868.jpg

If you zoom in on that picture you can actually see an open checkbook on the blue car's dashboard

And if I was living in an episode of Numb3rs I'd be able to...

WTF my sort code is 8 and there it is in FULL PUBLIC VIEW!

I read nabisco's #3, thinking the whole time, he took a cab through the drive-thru? Those wiley New Yorkers until I caught on.

http://wondermark.com/comics/416.gif

I LOOK UP NIŢSUH [.]S IN THE PHONEBOOK AND STEAL CHECKS FROM THEIR MAILBOXES

Actually the one time I ever feared identity theft is when I self-googled and saw a listing where someone with my exact name and middle initial (which is weird because my first name's odd and our people don't do middle names in the first place) had bought a house outside D.C.

Then I remembered that no way could my identity get a home loan, so the "worst"-case scenario was that an illegal immigrant was hanging out and steadily improving my credit rating.

http://www.lifelock.com/

My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462

time to steal some identity

Fraud-prevention pitchman becomes ID theft victim - CNN.com

My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is lol-ha-lmao

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/lifelock.png

lifelolk

My daughter's ss is dangerously close to being 12345678. It almost looks like a novelty ss card.

how close? like which numbers are off?

and by how much?

oh man the lifelock shit
that was a lol

my SSN has five 4s in it, 4 of which are consecutive

Surprised it isn't 101-00-1101.

it also has two consecutive 2s

mine only has 4 unique numbers.

the other five are pretty milquetoast.

That guy in Texas who scammed $500 in payday-loan money from Mr. Lifelock -- what if he jumped bail, moved to New York, and bought a DVR??? Hide your wallets!

Note: I actually started this thread less because of #1 and more because of #2, because I couldn't tell if I should have been arguing with the convenience-store guy more. He just kept chuckling!

My daughter's ss is dangerously close to being 12345678. It almost looks like a novelty ss card.

I do apologise but I read that as 'my daughter's ass is dangerously close to being 12345678'.

Maybe he was chuckling because his intent was to have the cc#s stolen.

I once left my credit card at a bar and went there the next day to get it. The bartender gave me a recipe box full of abandoned credit cards to go through. I was this close to just grabbing the box and walking out.

time to use my scrabble cheating code to STEAL TOM'S IDENTITY

My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 595 47 #unread

https://forums.symantec.com/syment/blog/article?blog.id=istr&message.id=8#M8

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) categorizes identity theft into five major types: financial (the identity is used to obtain goods and services), criminal (the identity is used during a criminal investigation or arrest), commercial (the identity of a business is used to obtain credit), governmental (the identity is used to obtain government issued documents such as a passport or driver's license), and cloning (the identity is assumed by another and used on a daily basis).

Tombot I already told you to cut "identity" from the title!

well whatever there you go, it still works

my email address is pretty straightforward w/out any numbers or punctuation so i get emails from random ppl who think they are email someone else all the time. today i got an email from a dude with his full contact info, incl 3 phone numbers

THE MYSTERIOUS AND OCCASIONALLY FUNNY SAGA OF REESEWITHERSPOON AT HOTMAIL DOT COM

IM INVALID CHILD

i mourn the lack of changeable usernames everyday.

http://alumni.indiana.edu/magazine/issues/200605/images/Identity_opener.jpg

That looks more like "face theft" than "identity theft".

http://images.comicbookresources.com/litg/2008/0707/sm/article-0-01CBD99C00000578-102_468x286.jpg

Putting the 'id' back in identity theft.

http://www.wisebread.com/files/fruganomics/imagecache/blog_image_full/files/fruganomics/blog-images/identity%20theft.JPG