Click here if you're aware of your vulnerability to ID theft

How to deter ID theft

  • Never respond to an email or pop-up message seeking personal or financial information. Legitimate companies don't make such requests. Never click on links in emails or pop-ups, either.
  • Check your credit report at the four leading consumer credit reporting agencies once a year for new accounts, errors or anything else you don't recognize. Do this at
  • Check your bank and card account statements for fraudulent charges and report suspicious ones immediately. "Take a quick look (online) at least a couple times a week," said Kelly Schrader, senior vice president for marketing at OnPoint Community Credit Union in Portland. "The sooner we know, the sooner we can put a block on the card and potentially even recover those losses."
  • Opt out of pre-approved credit solicitations.
  • Check out these online games to test your knowledge and improve your defenses.
  • Forward email scams to the Federal Trade Commission at

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sony_playstation_portable_ngp.jpgView full sizeSony's PlayStation Portable "NGP."

Linh Pham checked his bank account online after Easter and found a charge he never made -- to a website in Portugal.

When he called his debit card provider to report it, he was told that multiple charges totaling hundreds if not thousands of dollars awaited approval in the account, for items ranging from jewelry to electronics.

Pham, a 31-year-old IT systems engineer from Beaverton, has no idea how the charges got there.

He does, however, own a

And the first charge on his card showed up April 22, his credit card provider says. That's two days after Sony says it

that its PlayStation Network had been hacked, compromising millions of accounts.

Pham might never know what happened.

will neither confirm nor deny that card numbers linked to those accounts were stolen, and the company did not return messages seeking comment on his suspicion. Pham could well have had his number lifted surreptitiously from a parking-lot payment machine or a gas station pump, incidents of which are on the rise, experts say. A spokeswoman for OnPoint Community Credit Union, which issued Pham's card, said it has not noticed an uptick in card fraud from the Sony breach.

But his experience shows how pervasive, confusing and frustrating identity theft has become. A number of groups last year reported a decline in confirmed data breaches. Yet high-profile losses this year at Sony, Epsilon, Skype and Health Net, along with the pilfering of

, warrant our attention. Unlike past breaches, most of these are so big that if they've not touched you directly, you certainly know someone they have.

Each breach represents a different threat, too.

provides email marketing to household brands such as Chase, Capital One and the Kroger Co. Millions of email addresses and customer names

, and their pilfering could lead to some very convincing "spear phishing" scams, experts say. Victims could get an email at some point that looks very much as though it's coming from a company they know and trust. One click on a link in that email could launch malicious software (malware) that, for example, clandestinely combs their computers for personal information.

's missing disk drives,

and 2 million nationally, are more worrisome, experts say. Private health information -- Social Security numbers, insurance numbers, etc. -- could end up in the wrong hands and be used by ne'er-do-wells to access health services.

"Those are much, much more difficult for consumers to clean up," said Doug Pollock, chief marketing officer for

, which provides theft solutions for companies and victims. "Even more seriously, you can end up with the health care system having medical information, diagnoses and such, that aren't actually yours. You can literally end up with a polluted health care profile."

In Oregon

The state has received eight identity theft complaints through May 3, a pace poised to match last year's total.

  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007

Source:

Oregon Division of Finance and Corporate Securities

You might discover this only by scanning your insurer's Explanation of Benefits statement each month, Pollock said. And we all know we'd rather play video games. Offline, that is.

breach is still under investigation, says Diane Childs,

outreach coordinator for the

. But Childs said her office has not had a reported case of medical ID theft in Oregon since it started enforcing the state's

.

Ironically, the division also has opened an investigation into a breach at the

that occurred about the same time as Health Net's and possibly involved some Health Net customers' identities. The breach happened after an insurance examiner set down a state-issued laptop in a post office, left without the computer and returned to find it gone.

None of these incidents instills faith in their targets. Pham said he won't be playing any more Sudoku or other puzzle or trivia games online with other PlayStation gamers.

He's filed a complaint with Childs' agency, hoping to determine Sony's liability. (Childs said the division needs more complaints before it will open an investigation.)

If you're a victim

  • Put a security freeze on your credit reports to prevent anyone from accessing one without your authorization. Oregon victims can do this for free. The state offers
  • Put a fraud alert
  • Close any accounts that have been tampered with, file a police report and
  • Change all your passwords, not just the one linked to the compromised account.
  • Visit the

"I'm basically severing myself from being a Sony customer," Pham said. "Security is not just techniques or things you implement. It's also trust."

This from an IT engineer who's worked for a retailer and phone-service provider that have had to guard consumer card numbers. He knows the industry standards companies are supposed to meet.

A recent report by

suggests many companies don't. The annual study reviewed nearly 600 payment card breaches worldwide last year and found that 89 percent of the victims weren't verified as compliant with security standards set up by the card industry. The study also concluded that more small companies had become targets.

"The 2010 compliance data simply doesn't provide us with a basis for optimism," the report said.

Of course, sometimes we have only ourselves to blame. I know three people who lost a wallet or credit card in the past two weeks. One watched someone rack up more than $600 in charges on the card within two days.

So, you see, it doesn't really matter if identity theft is waning or waxing. It's always going to be with us, as long as there are criminal minds, electronic means of commerce and our own distracted, vulnerable psyches. As with our financial health, it's up to us to protect our identities.

"The good guys don't have a lot of time," Pham said. "The bad guys have all the time in the world."

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welcomes questions about his column or blog. Reach him at 503-221-8359 or via

or

.

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