Compromising You

Identity thieves get the information they need through a variety of ways: Lost or stolen wallets; telemarketing scams; stolen mail; sifting through garbage; by posing as landlords or employers to credit reporting agencies; and, increasingly, off the Internet.

The Web is one of the easiest means to obtain personal information, either through hacking into databases or through what law enforcement calls "phisher scams," says Dan Clements, chief executive officer of CardCops.com, a Malibu-based card protection service. In this scam, thieves pretending to be a business send bulk e-mails saying that the recipient's account information has been compromised or lost and the account holder needs to key it in again. Sometimes, the e-mail will link to a Web page, and other times it will ask a recipient to fill in the e-mail form and send it back. Citibank, Best Buy, Amazon, Earthlink, eBay, and PayPal customers were targets of the scam in the past year.

Online customer databases are also targets, because thieves can get thousands of credit cards at once, says Clements.