Local firm works to curb ID theft Local firm works to curb ID theft (August 19, 2005)
W hen my daughter Jenny told me that her American Express card had been used to make unauthorized payments of $2,235 at a Sprint Spectrum store in Marietta, Ga., I called Bruce Cundiff, Pleasanton’s local credit card fraud guru, to see just how often these credit card abuses happen. Plenty of times, it turns out, which is why Cundiff and his partner Jim Van Dyke have a booming business at their Javelin Strategy & Research on Old Bernal Avenue. The two, who have broad-based industry financial services backgrounds while working for Jupiter's San Francisco office, started their business in Pleasanton, where Van Dyke lives, to provide research and analysis to banks, credit card companies and other financial services. With identity fraud and now phishing seen as leading problems facing businesses and consumers, Javelin Strategy is rapidly expanding. The company has already moved once from its two-man office, and now plans to move again as it adds to its growing staff of analysts

Cundiff was kind enough to send me the firm's 2005 Identity Fraud Survey Report, a 92-page detailed and comprehensive analysis of identity theft in the U.S. Within the last 12 months, 9.3. million American adults became victims of identity fraud, at a cost of $52.6 billion to the economy. And although we hear more these days about online fraud and security breaches by financial institutions that somehow let our personal data, including Social Security numbers, leak out from their supposedly-secure computer files, Javelin's research shows that most thieves still obtain personal information through traditional rather than electronic channels. Last year, 68 percent of personal information was obtained offline as opposed to only 11.6 percent obtained online. Conventional methods include lost or stolen wallets, misappropriation by family and friends and theft of paper mail. Go out to Pleasanton Garbage someday and take a look at the large bundles of corporate paper awaiting the recycling vendor and you can often find the tips of invoices, letters and other documents that still show account numbers, names and billing figures that should have been shredded, not dropped whole in the trash bin.

Part of Javelin's mission is to work with its clients on consumer campaigns to alert everyone to keep highly sensitive financial information away from others. That means guarding personal assets from theft or loss and to refrain from carrying unnecessary information, such as PIN numbers, passwords or Social Security numbers, in wallets or purses. Javelin also recommends that consumers should cancel paper bills and statements wherever possible and instead pay bills and check statements online. Despite the concern much of the public has over the security of online banking, bill payments and product-ordering information, it's safer than leaving a paper trail. That's how my daughter Jenny spotted the Sprint charge on her American Express bill. She checks her various accounts online regularly, which Cundiff urged everyone to do, rather than waiting until a monthly statement arrives weeks later. Even though credit card companies such as American Express remove unauthorized charges at no cost to their consumer cardholders, the faster the fraud is reported the better, before the fraudsters can do more damage.

In Jenny's case, Cundiff suspects her card was skimmed when she used it to pay for a restaurant meal on a recent trip to Atlanta. Using new, high tech devices, someone replicated all of the information on the card and reproduced it. Within minutes, the card continued on to the restaurant cash register and was returned to her with a bill to sign with no evidence that it now had a twin that would make its way to the Sprint store in nearby Marietta. For more information about identity fraud, check out Javelin's Web site at: www.javelinstrategy.com. 1

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