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Why ID Thieves Like College Students

By Amy | August 27, 2007

Dave Ramsey, financial author and radio host, went on The Early Show on CBS last week to talk about ID theft and college students. According to the CBS News article covering the story:

Unfortunately, Ramsey observed, college students and campuses are big targets of identity thieves. The Federal Trade Commission discovered that 31 percent of identity-theft victims fall into the 18-29 age group. Last December, UCLA reported that hackers accessed the school’s database, which contained personal information on about 800,000 current and former students and staff. While that was one of the largest such incidents, similar scenarios happen regularly at universities across the country. Schools are a logical target: There are many different offices and computers with this information that can be hacked into, and a large pool of potential victims. While parents and students can’t prevent this from happening, they can work to insure that the student herself doesn’t hand her identity to a thief.

Why is this happening? According to Ramsey, there are three major reasons:

Naivety: Ramsey believes this is the No. 1 reason. Students simply aren’t aware that this might happen to them or that they need to take steps to prevent the problem. Ramsey tells of a Web “phishing” scam at his daughter’s school: Students received an e-mail from the local bank, asking them to “verify” personal information. Many, many students replied to the e-mail, and their accounts were promptly cleaned out. Also along those lines, students today are much more likely to share their personal information online — be it on a social networking site or shopping online, etc. These activities can result in ID theft if you’re not careful.

Receiving many credit card offers: According to the Department of Education, half of all college students receive credit card applications on a daily or weekly basis. Many students simply throw these away without destroying them. Anyone walking by a trash can grab your offer, fill it out, and receive a card in your name, all without your knowledge.

Failure to examine financial records: Students are notoriously bad at balancing their checking accounts or carefully reading credit card statements. This means an identity theft may go undetected for quite some time.

In light of this, it’s important that students arm themselves with the most effective weapon against ID theft: knowledge! Safeguarding personal information to preventing ID theft is a relatively simple process, requiring little more than a shredder and a little time once a year to check credit reports.

Every college student should have a shredder, and use it! All of those credit offers need to be shredded, along with any kind of document containing personal information.

College students aren’t off the hook when it comes to checking their credit reports. They should be reviewing their reports once a year just like everyone else. Ramsey suggests that it’s something they can do with their parents when they go home for a visit.

Finally, everyone needs to keep their personal information private. Social Security numbers don’t need to be revealed to everyone. Don’t be afraid to ask why the number is being requested and don’t be afraid to refuse to give it out if you don’t get a good answer.

For more on this topic, you can see a video of Dave Ramsey speak on the subject here.

Topics: Identity Theft, Students |

One Response to “Why ID Thieves Like College Students”

  1. Fifth Carnival of College and Finance | College and Finance Says:
    November 18th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    […] presents Why ID Thieves Like College Students | BBB Consumer Education posted at BBB Consumer […]

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