2024年5月1日发(作者：巴可投影机)

IdentityTheft身份盗窃

If you think that you aren’t giving away3 anything important, think again.

Identity thieves may know more than you realize. With your unsuspecting help,

they can learn even more. Your Social Security Number (SSN) and a few other key

facts are all a thief needs to steal your good name—and leave you stuck with a

criminal record or staggering4 debts.

That is what happened to Zach Friesen. At 17, he applied for a job. The

prospective5 employer did a credit check. Only then did Zach find out that he was

tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

When Zach was only 7, someone using his identity had bought a $40,000

houseboat6, among other things. Zach himself was innocent of wrongdoing, but

his record made him look irresponsible, even criminal. The long-gone thief was

never caught.

Are You the Only You?

In 2005, more than 245,000 cases of identity theft were reported to

law-enforcement7 agencies. More than 11,000 of those victims were younger

than 18. The actual number of young victims is much higher, because many won’t

know what happened to them for years to come.

Kids make great targets because the younger the victim, the more time the

thief is likely to have before anyone becomes suspicious. Kids get an SSN at birth

but rarely use it until applying for a job at 16 or college at 18. Only then—like Zach

Friesen—do they discover problems.

That is why so many ID thefts are being reported by people aged 18 to 29. For

many of those victims, someone had been misusing their identity for years—in

some cases, a decade or more.

Strangers are not the only people who saddle8 kids with debt. “More

frequently, it is a family member who has stolen a kid’s identity,” Linda Foley said.

Foley is executive9 director and co-founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center

(ITRC).“I know of an 8-year-old girl who told her mother that she had seen her

father with a credit card in her name,” said Foley. “The mother said, ‘Oh, it must

have been your library card.’ When the girl was 11, she found a bill in her name.

That convinced her mother.” But by then, the girl’s record was burdened with

three years’ worth of debt.

Foley and her husband founded the ITRC to help victims of the painful

crime. In 1997, Foley’s identity was stolen, she says,“by someone I considered a

friend.” Posing as Foley, the woman applied for a cell-phone account and three

credit cards. Unlike Zach Friesen’s thief, Foley’s was caught, convicted10, and

sent to prison. Catching ID thieves, though, is no guarantee that they will pay back

what is owed—even if so ordered by a court.

Be a Crime Buster11