I got my university degree in 2009. During my years of higher education students in the library regularly asked me to watch their belongings while they went to the bathroom.
If I’d been at all light-fingered I could have scored some awfully nice phones, laptops and whatever was in their backpacks.
Given how much info is stored on smartphones, I might also have been able to do a little banking or shopping.
So believe me when I say that your college-age kid is at serious risk for identity theft. Believe the experts, too, because they say that Junior or Sister make perfect targets.
He’s excited to be back in school/in school for the first time. She tends to be a little too trusting of her new best friends (and all the other strangers who wander in and out of the dorms).
She may leave a loan application lying on the desk, or neglect to lock the door when she heads down the hall for a shower. He may apply for a credit card at one of those tables in the quad, without thinking about who might be looking over his shoulder to memorize his Social Security number.
Worst of all, college students have little or no credit history. Not only are they the perfect blank slates for identity thieves, they’re a lot less likely to monitor their credit – after all, they don’t have cards.
That they know of, anyway – someone else might have gotten cards in their names and used them with abandon.
Even the warning signs of ID theft are likely to be ignored, according to Ken Chaplin of ProtectMyID by Experian.
Students will look at a collections letter or a late-payment notice and figure “it was junk mail, or sent to the wrong person,” he says.
Guarding against thieves
Almost 30% of ID theft victims are between the ages of 18 and 29, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Obviously not all are in college, but even non-students and college grads are attractive targets because, again, they’re less likely to monitor their credit reports.
(They’re not alone. Only 4% of U.S. consumers take advantage of their free annual credit reports, according to John Ulzheimer, credit expert with CreditSesame.com.)
General protect-your-identity tips apply to all age groups; more on those in a minute. But students are especially vulnerable, for the reasons mentioned above and for the fact they’re living with people about whom they know nothing.
“Friends, roommates and classmates are all potential scammers,” says Steve J. Bernas of the Better Business Bureau. So-called “friendly fraud” makes up more than one-fifth of college identity crimes.
That’s not to say that your kid is living in a nest of vipers. But you really don’t know these people, and you don’t know the people they invite in. It’s also important to remember that anyone can walk onto a college campus. Many dorms now require key cards, but students may hold the door for the “student” or “parent” behind them.
The last time I was on the UW campus I wandered by one of my daughter’s former dorms. As I went up the stairs, a student ahead of me smiled and waited so that I could enter after her. She probably assumed I was somebody’s mom, there for a visit.
Lock it up
Thus anyone, matriculated or not, could pop into your kid’s room for a moment and help himself to Junior’s billfold — or to the student loan approval letter on the desk. Wallets, smartphones and any kind of personal papers should be kept in a locked desk drawer or file cabinet.
In fact, any “sensitive” mail should be sent to your parents’ home or to a post office box, advises Andrew Schrage of the Moneycrashers personal finance site: “School mailboxes are not always secure.”
Social Security cards and birth certificates should be locked away at their parents’ homes. If living on their own, students should keep these documents in a safe-deposit box or a locked file cabinet.
Lock away student loan, bank and credit-card paperwork, too. Carry only the ID and credit cards you need at any given time, e.g., your student ID and debit or one credit card. That way your losses will be minimized if your wallet gets lost or stolen — still the most common method of identity theft, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Report any loss or theft immediately. A couple of years ago I got mugged and the thieves immediately used my credit card to buy themselves dinner. Fortunately that was all they had time to do before I called the bank to cancel the card.
Obviously you should memorize your password rather than write it on the debit card. Make that secret knock impossible to guess (e.g., not your date of birth or your last name) to reduce the chances it will be hacked.
More tips from the pros
Don’t store passwords or pin numbers on your smartphone or laptop. And if you don’t have password protection? Please initiate it, right now. Check out phone-finder apps, so you can trace it if it goes missing; some apps allow you to remotely lock or even wipe the phone clean.
If you receive credit applications, shred them. Ditto any other financial docs you don’t want to keep. (Recently I saw a “You have been pre-approved!” envelope in the trashcan at the post office. Yikes.)
Don’t give out personal info over the phone or via Internet unless the source is absolutely trustworthy and you initiated the contact. Be wary about giving your Social Security number to anyone, for any reason.
A few more tips from the experts:
- Be wary of Wi-Fi hotspots. “Public networks are generally insecure and are a favorite haven for hackers to lurk,” Schrage says. “At the very least, don’t conduct any banking or credit card transactions on a public network.”
- Order a credit report every four months (one free one from each of the three major reporting agencies) through AnnualCreditReport.com to make sure no one is using your identity.
- Check your credit and debit statements and dispute anything that you don’t recognize.
- Use a firewall program on your computer, and make sure it has up-to-date spyware and antivirus software.
- Don’t download files or click on hyperlinks from unknown persons.
- Keep your dorm room or off-campus apartment locked at all times. It takes only a minute for a thief to ruin your day and potentially compromise your credit for years.
“It’s not about being afraid: It’s about being smart and being aware of your personal information and its value,” Chaplin says.
Incidentally, the above information also applies to non-students who share living spaces with roommates — or relatives. Family members are responsible for quite a bit of ID theft, especially as regards children. Lock up your info and your kids’ info, too.
And if the worst happens? The Federal Trade Commission website offers step-by-step instructions on what to do if your identity is stolen. Here’s hoping you never need to use it.
Related reading:
This comment is not about the above piece on stolen identities, but rather a comment on the “related reading.” I just had to read “If you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?” Why? Because that is what my father (who was rich) always said to me. In the process of reading that article, I discovered that you worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and married someone that you met there. Could the world REALLY be that small? I married a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer, too! Once, at a party when then Mayor Frank Rizzo asked my husband my name, my husband answered, “Oh, you don’t need to know her first name, she is only important because she is married to me.”
Needless, to say, I have now been happily UNmarried to that reporter for more than 40 years. Glad you got out from under YOUR heavy weight hubby, too, and are living the life you deserve with your LP.Bet you have already noticed that LP not only stands for life partner, but also for long play (as in record albums). I trust that he is an LP in both senses of the word! I am smiling to think that we trekked on the same path in Philly—though I was there much earlier than you!
As Steven Wright says, “It’s a small world — but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”
Glad you got out of that kind of nullifying relationship. I’m happily unmarried going on nine years myself.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
I didn’t have my identity stolen, but I had a ton (or what felt like a ton to a poor college student) of money stolen. I went home for Christmas break and my roommate stayed. She was considered a close friend so I didn’t worry much and left a few things behind, including some finance files. She dug through and found my credit card info, called the number and had $$ wired to her bank account. Clearly I failed to keep my information safe and I learned a valuable lesson. I’m thankful because it could have been much worse – she could have stolen my identity. Fabulous post. I hope many pay attention.
Slightly off base, but I had all my cash stolen when my purse was in a church basement as I was the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding. Geez, was I supposed to carry it down the aisle over my shoulder?
I was a single mother then and the cash was my weekly grocery and gas money. But I recovered.
Ouch. That recovery must have been a tough one, though.
The situation makes me think of how in some places you need someone to stay at your home during a funeral lest you be ripped off. Yep, crooks read the obits. Sigh.
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Anna had her/our credit card stolen only a few weeks after she moved into the dorm. Her roommate told her she loved to steal and then the card was gone. Not a very bright thief.
She locked everything up after that even her underwear. Yes, her dear roomie would go through those too.
She now has an AWESOME roommate and they have lived together for 3 years.
I work on a college campus and I have lots of encounters with both graduate and undergraduate students.
I am shocked at how many of them carry their social security card in their wallets every day. I sure scold them when I find that out… Why aren’t they taught better???
Not related to identity theft, but definitely related to personal finance and budgeting… The vending machines on campus take credit cards. It is so depressing. Every time I walk by, I’m hitting the “cancel” button because someone has swiped their card, gotten their soda or snickers and then walked away, leaving their card active in the system (I think it is set to “time out” after a certain period of time, but I know that many times people circle the building looking for a machine that was left with an active account so that they can get free stuff.
How on earth can they keep track of their finances if they are so careless???
Wow…I didn’t know that about cards still being active. I thought they were one-time-use. Agree that this is scary and does not bode well for their financial futures. On the other hand, if they get burned enough times maybe they’ll wise up.
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I went to college back in the dark ages of the 1990s, but I forgot my ATM card in the bank machine about 10,000 times before I just gave up and stopped using it. Nobody ever stole it, since most people aren’t theives. Now you can buy groceries by waving your cell phone at the till, so anybody who loses a phone can lose money that way if they have that set up.
But I knew several people whose PARENTS used their identities to get credit, as soon as they were out of the house and not looking at the mail there every day. And what do you do about that? None of them prosecuted, because it was their parents. And I’m sure the parents didn’t even think about it as theft – they were going to pay off all the debt eventually, right? Just like their own debt they’d maxed out and couldn’t get anymore.
Actually now that I think about it I know my little brother used my identity to sign up for CD of the month clubs and get free CDs (dark ages, right?). Same thinkin – it’s not *stealing*. But he’s very organized, I never got stuck with a bill, just junk mail.
Familial identity theft is a big, big problem. The relatives who actually have the capacity for shame just tell themselves that desperate times call for desperate measures and they’ll pay it back eventually. The others just see an opportunity and grab it.
You’re right: Few people want to prosecute family. Of course, that’s what they’re counting on.
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This is a very good post, and college students should definitely read it. I’ve seen students leave their laptops unattended in cafes and libraries; anyone could swoop by and grab them when the students are gone. I’ve been robbed on more than one occasion, which is why I no longer bring my credit cards with me.
Yikes! Sorry you were robbed. That’s why I carry only one card and leave one at home: If I get mugged again, I’ll still have plastic I can use if I need it.
I’m afraid that plenty of college students are 10 feet tall and bulletproof, though. They think robberies happen only to other people.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.