Identity Theft and Students

Identity theft is rampant among college students. According to the Federal Trade Commission, people between the ages of 19 and 29 have the highest incident rate of identity theft.

If you’re a college student, you’re probably in that age bracket, and there’s not much you can do about that. In fact, a large degree of the risk is out of your control.

What you can’t control

Recent hacking incidents, as well as careless handling of data, put hundreds of thousands of students at risk of identity theft:

• UCLA - The names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, etc. of 800,000 current and former students and faculty members were accessed by hackers from October, 2005 to November, 2006.
• Ohio University - Hackers accessed a server affiliated with a university medical center and gained the personal and medical information of 60,000 current and former students, as well as faculty and staff members.
• University of Kentucky - A professor’s flash drive was left in a classroom and then stolen. On the drive was the academic and personal information of 6,500 current and students from 1986 to 2006. A month earlier, the university posted personal information of 1,300 current and former employees on the internet … and left it there for 19 days.

Compounding the risk to students is the fact that 48 percent of students have had grades posted by Social security number, according to a recent national survey for Chubb Group Insurance Companies.

“At most colleges, the Social Security number is the universal identifier," says Mary Ann Avnet, Chubb Insurance Company vice president. "And it was never meant to be that way."

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to protect yourself

What you can control

The Chubb report also found that many students are cavalier with their personal information.

• Forty-nine percent of college students receive credit card applications on a daily or weekly basis. Almost 30 percent of students throw out card applications without destroying them.
• Nearly 30 percent of students rarely, if ever, reconcile their credit card and checking account balances.

"If you get pre-approved applications for credit, shred them. Burn them, do something," says Susan Grant, director of the National Fraud Information Center. “Take a look at bank statements and credit card statements as soon as you get them," Grant says. "Pick up mail promptly and stop it if you're going to be away."

Once you bring that mail home, don’t leave it lying around. If it’s a document you need to keep, lock it in a file cabinet or safe. If it has any of your identifying information on it but you don’t need to keep it, shred it.

Whether it’s your mail, driver’s license, student ID or a crumpled credit card receipt, deal with it. Don’t give neighbors, roommates or roommates’ friends easy access to your personal information.

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