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Giving Credit Where Credit Is Not DueThe big identity-theft bust last week was just a taste of what The big identity-theft bust last week was just a taste of whats to come. Heres how to protect your good name HERES THE SCARY THING about the identity-theft ring that the feds cracked last week: there was nothing any of its estimated 40,000 victims could have done to prevent it from happening. This was an inside job, according to court documents. A lowly help-desk worker at Teledata Communications, a software firm that helps banks access credit reports online, allegedly stole passwords for those reports and sold them to a group of 20 thieves at $60 a pop. That allowed the gang to cherry-pick consumers with good credit and apply for all kinds of accounts in their names. Cost to the victims: $3 million and rising. Even scarier is that this, the largest identity-theft bust to date, is just a drop in the bit bucket. More than 700,000 Americans have their credit hijacked every year. Its one of crimes biggest growth markets. A name, address and Social Security number--which can often be found on the Web--is all anybody needs to apply for a bogus line of credit. Credit companies make $1.3 trillion annually and lose less than 2% of that revenue to fraud, so theres little financial incentive for them to make the application process more secure. As it stands now, its up to you to protect your identity. | 
