According to the internetretailer.com, holiday sales are up 15%-16% this year online, but down 4.7%-10% instore. If I were in the identity theft business, I would have a hard time containing my excitement.
Last year, my Holiday article was all about various hacks and scams that always seem to increase around this time of the year. This year, I wanted to highlight a simple way to find out if your identity has been compromised.
How many people actually balance their checking accounts and look at their monthly statements from their credit card companies? According to statisticbrain.com a consumer poll done in 2012, the number of people who don’t balance their checkbooks is 69%. I would guess that the credit card numbers may be a bit lower, but not by much.
While the credit card companies do a reasonably good job of detecting fraud, they are not perfect, and if you wait too long, you may end up eating the loss.
In my mind, ignoring your financial statements is the same as collecting computer logs, but never looking at them. The evidence of a compromise is sitting somewhere in your logs, but it is often not discovered until something really bad happens.
I am sure that most of us will agree that this is not the most exciting use of your time, but fighting with the banks or reading about the big data compromise at your company is the type of excitement I can do without.
Happy Holidays
Joel