Identity Thieves Drain Unemployment Benefit Funds 496
Makarand writes "According to a News.com.com article, the
defrauding of state government
unemployment benefit programs is the most underpublicized identity theft crime
and the states are not doing much about it. Identity thieves are using
stolen social security numbers to file false unemployment claims and collecting
benefits because the states have no systems in place to deter fraud. In fact,
it is easier to convert stolen identity data into money by filing
false unemployment claims than going after the credit card companies." From the article: "File a false unemployment claim and you can receive $400 per week for 26 weeks. Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you've made a quick $1.04 million. It's tough to make crime pay much better than that."
Easier the other way... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
With all the theft of personal information in the news lately, and considering that a large percentage of this stolen information was Social Security numbers, it might be easier to compile a national database of Social Security numbers that haven't been stolen. ^_^
Seriously, though, this is just yet another good argument to ditch the Social Security number system entirely...it's clearly not working. Essentially, with just one number, you have a system where the SSN is both the public and the private part of the ID, and as any security professional can tell you, that simply is not a workable model.
Check for actual unemployment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Insightful)
No one gets fired and we never get accountability (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Victims? (Score:5, Insightful)
Little harder than indicated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of another central database which conveniently aggregates all your personal information in one place, ripe for the hacking, what we need is a law passed that requires companies to remove the SSAN from their databases. All of them. The company can replace it with a unique identifier if they want but there is no reason for them to have the SSAN in the first place. Yes, I know it's the one number everyone remembers when someone is trying to identify you, but that is a poor reason for every database on the planet to contain such an important identifier. Let's develop a better way to authenticate someone, why don't we?
Quick?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Quick? 26 weeks? Plus the start up overhead of several weeks?
Software probably can solve this (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things bother me about the article, however:
1) The person calling our attention to this problem is a software vendor. He runs a payroll software firm, and probably has some financial interest in fraud-detection software. If nothing else, his byline contains an advertisement for his company.
2) He doesn't really present any evidence for the problem other than hearsay from an official in Washington State. Neither of them presents any real numbers.
I think it's wise to prevent this problem, and shore up any weakness to this exploit that may exist, but it's also important to be sure that a problem exists before demanding that the state take action.
Re:Victims? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where do you think that government funding comes from?
Re:Easy to fix (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to reality, where criminals are real people and economic crime doesn't stop just because you say "Hey, wait, it's a free market! This isn't fair! Why don't you get a job?"
Re:Article Text (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Check for actual unemployment? (Score:5, Insightful)
So really, I'd LOVE to know how this is done, because I couldn't even get legitimate unemployment when I was out of work.
Kintanon
Re:Victims? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummmm, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in the very recent past, they WERE willing to accept a job and their skills WERE useful.Again, they were considered "useful" in the very recent past.
By your "logic", there would never be any unemployment because the only people who would be counted as "unemployed" would have skills currently needed by business and a willingness to work for those businesses. So why would they not be hired by those businesses?
And before you talk about demanding too much money, the businesses would only have to offer them more than they'd make on unemployment.
Which doesn't leave much rational for "unemployment".
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:2, Insightful)
And a later post by demaria correctly states how the unemployment figure is reached - a household survey of 1,000 people - and if some of those people are now homeless - they simply count some more until they've reached that 1,000 number - thus not figuring in reality to the picture. (All one need do is check out the actual poverty statistics - this give a closer - but still not accurate [make that still smaller] number of real unemployment.)
Re:Check for actual unemployment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology-wise: yeah, of course...the USA invented everything. If it wasn't for the USA the rest of the Universe would stagnate. Grow up and actually learn something about science.
"Taxes would have to double": I see. Let's take the fact that the USA pays far more for less treatment than the rest of the world, work out what these insurance costs are going to be in a few years time, and then pretend it'll cost the same for a nationalised service. Oh! Taxes will double!
Re:how can it be that easy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would imagine that most states are the same way, and that the article is full of FUD.
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you're suggesting that we replace one obviously insecure numbering system (the SSN) with another (the national ID)? How would this differ from putting your picture on your Social Security card?
Or are you proposing something else which is more than a numbering system? If so, let's hear some details.
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens, when Charlie intercepts biometric communication between Alice and Bob, copies the signal and starts a replay attack later?
No security system is perfect and I am absolutely sure biometrics will be counterfeit and copied within less than 5 months after being introduced nationwide. People will grab the signal from the camera going to the reader, install their own cameras right beside or on top of the legit ones. They will intercept traffic at some other point, who knows. What matters is: at some point, identity thieves can and will acquire biometrics from someone else. And then the shit hits the fan, to say it bluntly. Lost or compromised passwords, -ports, ID-cards, keys and whatever can be disabled and re-issued to the legitimate persons. Biometrics cannot. When payment would at some point rely on iris pattern data, someone copies them, however complicated it may be and then goes on a shopping spree. How on earth would you imagine to stop this?
The question is WHEN this is gonna happen, not IF, once we use biometrics exclusively. Remember the underage student from Norway if you think some code can be really safe...
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now how are they REALLY counted. If you are on unemployment and you go to the office every week or file the paperwork every week to get your check, you are easy to count. If your benefits run out and you stop filing the paperwork, what happens? Does someone call you every week/month to see if you finally got a job (yeah, right)? Do they just assume you will never get a job and you are counted for life (yeah, right)?
So while that is the official definition, how does it REALLY work? Is the bureaucratic definition, "those that filed paperwork"?
You mean like... (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean like expecting the state to actually know what it's doing?
Executive summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Stolen passwords or cards can be retired, while compromised biometric data will haunt you forever.
Re:Check for actual unemployment? (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think they are checking the right employers? When I filled out the MN forms a few years back they asked me who I was working for in the last 6 months. I list all my past employers, and they call them to verify I was laid off.
If I wanted to cheat I could fill the forms out today, listing "mom and pop, inc" as employer, give my parent's phone number, and have my parents verify "Was a good employee, but we just don't need him anymore so we laid him off." Of course my parents wouldn't cheat for my like that, but some would, and I'm sure I could find some friend who would pretend to have a business for purposes of helping in the fraud - in return for some cash of course.
Some work needs to be done to cover your tracks, but it isn't that hard.
You can catch the fraud next April 15th when you get tax returns (Actually you can compare W2s in January to see that the person really was working), but by then the money is gone. Most likely the fraud will be caught because when you are dealing with that many false claims one person will get a legitimate claim while you are collecting... Then it is just a matter of investigation.
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
(emphasis mine)
The difference here is that the banks aren't legally allowed to combine the information they have with the profiling information places like WAL*MART and Radio Shack and the DMV and so on. The government is allowed to.
If the government controls the information, and makes the laws (laws they regularly break), they will most-certainly be combining this + National ID + all sorts of other information (health records, credit reports, Internet activity, phone records, etc.) to build a nice detailed profile about you.
Which would you prefer?
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry. This is something that really pisses me off. I've held jobs "beneath me" while looking for real work. Does it suck? Yup.
But what it boils down to in my mind is "Should I live off someone else when I don't have to? Or should I go work a job I don't like". To me, the answer is the latter choice.
I have NOTHING against giving someone a hand when they need it. Unemployment is a way to keep folks from losing everything when they lose a job. With today's fluid job market, it is a necessity. Welfare is great for those who truly need it.
But what I hate is... I'd rather you work for me than me get a job I don't want. Guess what? That unemployment check came from folks who have jobs they don't want.
I am involved in the hiring process at my job. Guess what: All other things being equal, I hire the guy with six months at McD's over the guy with six months looking for work. Every time. The first tells me: This guy wants to work. This guy is responsible. Those are the kind of guys I want working around me.
(Rant mode off.... for now)
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:1, Insightful)
Honestly, finding a job should not be that big a deal. Finding a GOOD job that pays well and has all the benifits you want, that's a bit tougher. But getting hired at a fast food place? Unless you're a moron who has no people skills and no desire to learn, that should not be a problem. If you aren't getting a job, instead of blaming the government, your skills, or whatever, start looking at what you can do differently. Even walking around homeless on the street can teach you lessons, if you would only look for them.
Look, I'm not a republican in the least. But I agree with republicans in that most of the time, the reason people are not finding work is because they are unwilling to learn how to be different then they are. In other words, if a jobless person stays the same, with all their current habits and beliefs, then they will NEVER find work. NEVER. Because they are not in the habit of finding work. Their very nature is to be jobless, because that's what they are doing. That's what led up to now, the things they did, the habits they formed, it all equaled joblessness. So the fault is in THEM, not in the government, not in the job market, not anyone else- THEM.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If I could tell jobless people one thing, I would tell them that 90% of success is all in your brain and the way you think about yourself and your world, not in what specific skills you have at the moment. With the right outlook, the right skills can be learned, regardless of your past or where you where you are right now where you THINK you can't learn anything.
Here are some ways to get people going:
1) Successful people believe they create their lives, rather then believing that life happens to them. Hopelessness is weak. And it's untrue- it assumes that person didn't have even one success in their lives, which is impossible.
2) Successful people look for what they are doing right, rather then what they are doing wrong. You get more of what you focus on. If you focus on what's wrong with you, you will actually attract more crap into your life.
3) Successful people don't blame, complain, or justify themselves. They take full accountablity for their lives and their situation. In other words, they come from a place of acknowledging what they do or not do by CHOICE, not because someone "forced" them to do anything.
There are many more, but if you want to get a clue, read The Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker.
Few here appear to doubt what is being presented (Score:3, Insightful)
They point out how almost everywhere, the claimant needs to claim in person... to have too many false faces is to share to wealth too widely, so why aren't they picked up by the staff working in the unemployment offices themselves?
Or is the fraud itself being exaggerated? Perhaps if there is a fraud, it's an internal one.
Re:Unemployment rate? (Score:1, Insightful)
What a bunch of self-help crap that is. The real truth is that there are all kinds of successful people, who got that way by all kinds of different ways, and who have very different personalities and act quite differently. There is no one or even handfull of ways to become successful. Hell, even the term successful means different things to different people. There are plenty of rich, miserable people out there too. Sometimes the traits that help you make money don't help you make friends.
yup (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2004/fil0
The FDIC Financial Institution Letters make interesting reading in general:
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2005/inde
Re:Easier the other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
The revocation would be used 'going foreward' and thus would be from $DATE on-ward that the old key would no longer be valid. So validity in the past would be fine - just make sure a date appears in the document (perhaps part of the standard signature?) so it can be verified that you signed it while the key was still valid. You could even be requested to re-sign the documents with your new key.
Sure, not perfect. But do we really have anything 'better' today?
Not that I can see (Score:3, Insightful)
At any rate, I can't imagine this is a pervasive crime. It's not like you can just submit a SSN online and receive $400 in your mailbox each week. They need to verify that you were working, how long you were working for, that your employer was paying your unemployment insurance, that your employer does not contest your unemployment claim, and that your employer terminated you through no fault of your own.
There is no way this is happening on a mass scale.