Senate Minority leader Harry Reid ID Theft

CNN reported today that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (d-Nevada) could not understand how someone got ahold of his credit card and illegally charged $2,000 to the good Senator.

ID theft is a pernicious thing and the fact that one of the top leaders in Congress does not understand how this could happen means he probably also cannot help legislate ID protection for the rest of us!

Credit Card theft can happen. Here is what the Department of Justice has to say:

"If you receive applications for "preapproved" credit cards in the mail, but discard them without tearing up the enclosed materials, criminals may retrieve them and try to activate the cards for their use without your knowledge. (Some credit card companies, when sending credit cards, have adopted security measures that allow a card recipient to activate the card only from his or her home telephone number but this is not yet a universal practice.) Also, if your mail is delivered to a place where others have ready access to it, criminals may simply intercept and redirect your mail to another location."

Home telephone?! Who has a "home" telephone anymore?

Also when you charge something there are portable scanning devices that can be used, say by the server in a restaurant or clerk at a store, to illegally scan in your credit card and then miuse it.

We are sending Sen. Reid a copy of our book and our ID Theft Seminar CD so that he can educate himself and his staff and write some better regulations.