Thursday, November 08, 2007

Ooo, goody!

Pretty Lady has always wanted a set of clear instructions for how to be a Successful Criminal, and Yahoo Finance has just provided a checklist:

Identity theft is the No. 1 crime in the U.S., according to Werner Raes, president of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators. The simplest form, mostly used by beginners, is to ask the DMV for a duplicate license in someone else's name. Identity thieves simply tell the DMV clerk that they've lost their license or that it was stolen, then provide someone else's illegally obtained information.
Pretty Lady has often thought that she'd be terrible at Disappearing. She tends to Stand Out In Crowds, even online, and her Signature Style is flamboyant and consistent. She tends to trust in the general indifference of the gross majority, to maintain her relative security in an increasingly totalitarian world, but one never knows when it might be necessary to flee to New Zealand.

Anyway, she is filing this list of tips away for emergency reference.

2 comments:

BoysMom said...

Remember too that those lovely little RFID chips the government offer as a secure solution will broadcast and the hackers can read the things from something like a mile away. They've published how on the web, so we less electronicly inclined can participate, too. A national ID system will make identity theft so much easier, all we need is a radio antenna, a computer, and the right program. Just imagine how many you could get from your own fire escape! Perhaps you could even BE from New Zealand!

*Wanders off to figure out which Boy swiped the sarcasm filter and where he hid it.*

Pretty Lady said...

Boysmom, I think I've mentioned this on Vox a couple of times, but you can destroy RFID tags embedded in things like clothing and paper money and ID cards by putting them in the microwave for about 30 seconds. When you hear a little 'poomf' noise, they're toast.

This is particularly good if you're planning on carrying a lot of currency across a border, which personally Pretty Lady would never dream of doing, because that's illegal.