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Torn-up Credit Card Apps Not So Safe
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Mar 15, 2006 03:27 PM
from the big-shocker-here dept.
from the big-shocker-here dept.
Maximum Prophet writes "This dude tears up a credit card application, tapes it back together, sends it in with his cell phone number and father's address, and voila, gets a credit card.
Who would have thought security at a credit card company was so lax? The company recommends that consumers "tear up" financial solicitations before throwing them away, "so thieves can't use them to assume your identity.", but according to them, "Applications that arrive in damaged form are customarily transferred to an electronic format, he said -- often by machine. So it's possible a human being never handled the taped-up application and never had the chance to spot the obvious sign of trouble." In this era where we worry so much about identity theft, this sort of thing really makes you wonder what the point really is.
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shred shred shred (Score:4, Informative)
-l
Re:shred shred shred (Score:3, Informative)
The reason these are considered "safe" is that most all credit card applications require a social security number. So, that means the identity thief has to steal a piece of mail from your health insurance company, which is a pretty reliable way of
Re:shred shred shred (Score:5, Informative)
I do kind of miss shredding the fake AmEx cards that came with their offers, though.
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:4, Insightful)
I met a guy with an even better idea. He has a home equity line of credit (HELOC). When a stupid credit card offer comes offering 0% interest, he pulls a couple grand out of the HELOC. Then he applies for the card and does a balance transfer from the new CC account to the HELOC. (Credit cards are too smart to just send you wads of cash when you apply, but they will give you the money if it's to pay another creditor- that's why he uses the HELOC, as an account to shift balances around.) If he gets the card and the transfer goes through, he puts the money in a CD earning 4.5% that matures when the card's introductory period expires.
Parent
Pre-approved applications (Score:5, Informative)
Amen. The reason I opted out of receiving those was exactly the one you mentioned, that they're a security problem.
The number to stop them at least used to be 888-5OPTOUT.
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, if you sign up for insurance, for most applications you can write the words "please assign" in the space for the SSN, and the company will assign a number for your policy. I should note that some brokers will get smart with you, and try to "guilt you" into providing your real social "in the event you are incapacitated" and "so your loved ones can help". Don't let them guilt you (if I am incapacitated or dead - I don't care anymore, now do I?). Also, don't put in a "fake SSN", as these get caught fairly easily (and you'll get a phone call or letter) - or if they aren't, then it might be YOU who are guilty of "identity theft", if it is found out it matches someone else's real number in the system...
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:3, Interesting)
wimp (Score:4, Funny)
its the only way to be completely sure.
Parent
Re:wimp (Score:3, Funny)
-l
p.s., ... "a controversial new study argues". ;)
Re:wimp (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:shred shred shred (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd think so, wouldn't you. However, you might want to read this story [edwardjayepstein.com] about the Iranian students in 1979.
First three sentences of the fourth paragraph:
This particular story didn't say so but I read elsewhere that the students laid out the shredded documents on the floor of gymnasiums and pieced the documents back together.
Parent
gymnasium and scotch tape no longer required (Score:4, Interesting)
The technology now exists to scan fragments of documents en-mass and piece them together semi-automatically in electronic format. Some human interaction is still required, but it is much faster and easier than the Iranian effort. This is being done to restore ancient manuscripts but I'm sure it's being done in the covert and criminal fields as well with shreded documents.
Parent
Re:gymnasium and scotch tape no longer required (Score:3, Interesting)
whose fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:whose fault (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:whose fault (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as they're vastly more powerful than us, it is usually to their advantage to create problems for you that you may (or may not) pay to make go away. I finally paid a lawyer over $5,000 to correct MBNA's refusal to stop reporting credit fraud as mine. Once the 100 page brief was filed with the court and MBNA saw that there would be financial consequences, they finally backed off.
There's a huge difference between what's illegal and what's prosecuted.
Parent
For the extra paranoid (Score:3, Interesting)
Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Insightful)
"Applications that arrive in damaged form are customarily transferred to an electronic format, he said -- often by machine. So it's possible a human being never handled the taped-up application and never had the chance to spot the obvious sign of trouble."
What, a machine opened the letter, recognized it was an application (and not, say, other junkmail that got stuffed into the nearest bulk reply envelope), fed it into a scanner, then trashed the hard copy? At no point in the process does a human see it? Sounds like bullshit.
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Informative)
1) Save the return envelope.
2) Fold up a blank piece of paper with a nice wad of chewing gum/peanut butter/diaper contents/etc
3) Mail your "application"
4) ???
5) Profit
Parent
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Informative)
My wife did a few months on graveyard shift at a First Security payment processing center (before Wells Fargo assimilated them). She said those machines are *really* cool, really fast, and jam up so easily that they have dedicated staff on-hand to fix particularly nasty jams.
So if you want to put a (albeit small) dent in the productivity of the Evil Credit Card Sharks, send back those handy self addressed envelopes stuffed with their own junk mail. Be sure to fold, spindle, and mutilate the envelope, too. :)
Parent
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Funny)
So if you want to put a (albeit small) dent in the productivity of the Evil Credit Card Sharks, send back those handy self addressed envelopes stuffed with their own junk mail. Be sure to fold, spindle, and mutilate the envelope, too. :)
Nah, just send back the application (blank) with a thin layer of jelly.
Parent
OMG! (Score:4, Funny)
OMG! That's not jelly! EEEEEEWWWWWW!
Parent
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Funny)
I made my own checkbox next to the "YES! Sign me up." that said "No thanks," and checked it. Naturally, I put it in the business reply envelope, along with a dollar or two in pennies (to be used toward the processing fee of course), and sent it on its way.
They never sent me another application.
Parent
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Informative)
I'd guess yes, at no point in the process does a human see it.
Here's one vendor -- OPEX [opex.com]. This one does opening and extraction [opex.com] but isn't particularly fast at 17,000/hr. They have a scanning solution as well -- significantly slower but the mail goes straight from envelope to scan.
This is just what I've found in a quick search because I knew something like it existed; I'm not that familiar with the high-speed mail processing industry. I'd imagine that the technology would surprise most people.
Parent
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possible? Yeah, but highly improbable (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it possible, but probable. While I would expect a lot of errors, or "bad" data from the scan, I promise you it was scanned...
Parent
Solution! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Solution! (Score:5, Interesting)
Last summer I had a notice in my mailbox from the Postmaster that stated there were reports of mail theft in our neighborhood and that we should be watching closely for ID theft.
My wife is concerned with throwing mail away and the thieves getting it there. Why would they bother to go through my trash and get dirty when they can get it fresh from my mailbox w/no one the wiser.
Parent
Re:Solution! (Score:3, Funny)
The basis: Where Credit Comes From (Score:5, Informative)
Banks want you to have credit -- of course they'll accept any application as long as the name and social security number match their lookups, and your FICO score is reasonably high (although banks are now lowering standards to give out even more credit).
When a bank offers credit, it does so based on money it has (of course). Yet it is very important for the average person to understand where this "money" comes from -- especially digital money such as you'd have when you have an available credit line.
All banks that are part of the central banking system (the Federal Reserve) are required by the Federal Reserve to stick something called a money multiplier. I believe the current money multiplier is 12% or so, but it varies. This basically means that a bank must keep a reserve of that amount versus the actual money is sends out. If a bank loans out $1000, it has to keep $120 in the bank. Even if it loans out the $880 ($120 in reserves) the bank can stil say it has $1000 in demand deposits available -- even though it doesn't.
The collusion comes into place when the first bank is given $1000 by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is allowed to print new money out of thin air by creating loans against government property and future government income. This initial $1000 is placed in Bank A as available cash. Bank A holds $120 but loans the remaining $880 to Bank B which is also part of the Federal Reserve banking system. Bank A still holds a demand deposit value of $1000 which is available to be withdrawn! Bank B also has $880, but has to reserve 12% of it ($105). It then loans the rest ($775) to Bank C, but still lists $880 as its available balance of demand deposits. Bank C reserves its 12% ($93) and loans the rest ($682) to Bank D, while still listing the original $775) as its available balance. This collusion continues to go around until there is no more reserve balance available. In the end, the original $1000 the Federal Reserve created is held as a base reserve for the $9000 or so "new money" that is created.
Banks need people to accept this money in loans or in credit -- this is the way the bank actually makes money. Eventually all the loans are hopefully paid back into the system, so the bank makes a nice interest rate. On the new $1000 created, each bank wants to loan out as much as possible -- and these loans are used to buy goods, which recycles money back into the banks which can be kept as reserves to create even more money! If the bank takes $1000 and loans out $880 but receives $400 of that bank in, it can now loan out a portion of that $400 that it has in reserves.
In the long run, the system wants debt out there because it is created out of fake inter-bank loans anyway. Most of you don't even see your physical money because it doesn't exist -- there are about $600 billion dollars in circulation worldwide, but there are over $10.2 trillion dollars on the books!
And people have faith in the system.
A Simple Way To Prevent This! (Score:5, Funny)
There's a foolproof way to keep this kind of identity theft from happening to you: just make sure your FICO score is really, really low!
That way, nobody will be able to get credit in your name. And, as a bonus, it's really easy to do!
Parent
But He Sent it In (Score:3, Funny)
If a real criminal would have attempted to tape it togather and send it in, the company would definitely not accept it...
And for the humor impaired ;-)
Pimply faced kids (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the fruad that I've suffered has been at the hands of large corporations that reckon that my lawyer won't be willing to take on their lawyer.
Isn't there a human somewhere? (Score:3, Interesting)
Make the banks liable... (Score:5, Informative)
Stop them at the source (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stop them at the source (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop them at the source (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
this is what suing is for (Score:3, Insightful)
What? Me, worry? (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is, that there isn't any point.
It's exactly that kind of thing, and the real lack of concern that I've witnessed from gov't agencies and financial institutions all along, concerning everything from someone's actual name and SSN being used as an alias by a known felon (and the SSA refusing to issue a new SSN for the "victim") to loan officers that say that there's so much junk data on credit reports that they often ignore a lot of it, that caused me not to worry if my "identity" is "stolen."
Existing cards aren't safe either (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly they didn't make even the slightest attempt to validate the charge. I've closed that account and put fraud watches on our credit and so forth, of course, and no other suspicious charges have shown up. Still, it makes me nervous.
Meanwhile, my father-in-law discovered his bank account was several hundred dollars short. Turns out he was auto-paying someone else's gas bill. My wife had a heck of a time straightening that out. The bank insisted it was the utility's responsibility and vice versa. "He signed up for automatic payment!"
"My father doesn't own a computer. Why would you authorize withdrawls for someone else's utility bill in the first place? Especially when their account number is identical except for two transposed digits..."
A mistake in that case, but it would be so easy to do that deliberately...
Something else the credit card companies do... (Score:4, Informative)
Ask them to stop sending them to you and they swear up and down it will happen, but it never does. It's just too lucritive for them to stop sending them to you.
Re:Uhoh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
True, but why is it *my* problem to solve? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I spend my money to solve a problem that some credit card company creates? Especially when I'm not even their freaking customer?
Parent
Re:Its called a cross cut shredder (Score:4, Interesting)
Churchstreet Technologies [eweek.com] will scan the debris in a shredder's output bin and their software will reconstruct it in RAM. They claim to be able to piece together even crosscut documents as long as you haven't mixed several bags together. Seems to be that columns of number would be an intractable problem, I don't know whether they can manage those.
Parent
Re:But He Filled It Out (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm going to be more careful to shred them all, but if you still think it's useless, that's fine by me. Send all of your ripped up CC applications to me, and I'll dispose of them.
Parent