Quote Originally Posted by uk elephant View Post
They just did a story about on-line privacy issues on the bbc the other week. They showed just how easy it is to steal someones personality with the information they found on facebook and then open bank accounts/loans/credit cards. All they needed was name, address, birthdate and in some instances mother's maiden name. All of which they accessed within minutes and were able to open a credit card account on line within seconds. I'm not so worried about people tracking me down for my opinions or stalking me for whatever reson. But I do worry a bit about people stealing my identity to fraudulently rack up debt in my name. Especially after I had my credit card details stolen last year and someone had a nice holiday in Morocco on my card. Luckily the bank believed me that time and the charges were dropped from my account.
Yikes! And you never told us about this It happened to me too a few years back. Somebody copied my credit card info, I think when I paid for several people's lunch at the Ritz Carlton in Berlin, of all places. They then used the card info to buy €35,000.- worth of phone cards. I hadn't even seen this on my bill yet when the card company called me and asked whether I'd actually bought all that phone time, since it was something I'd never bought before. The charge never did appear on my bill, but I had to sign a form agreeing to appear as a witness if they ever arrested somebody for the crime. And now I have a credit company doing checks on me on behalf of my publisher because somebody hacked the computer with all their royalties information and could have stolen all their authors' identities and bank information. So yes, this is a real problem, and probably a bigger risk than stalking for most of us.