Frankenstein Needs a New Pair of Shoes

And He May Steal Part of Your Identity to Buy Them

​There’s a relatively new twist in identity theft – synthetic identity theft, meaning the individual elements of the fake identity are either stolen from multiple victims or fabricated. Because none of the pieces are from the same victim, it’s like building a new person out of the spare parts of others – hence Frankenstein.
 
What’s the appeal? From the fraudster’s perspective, the Frankenstein approach offers numerous advantages over traditional identity theft (where a single, real person’s whole identity is stolen). The two biggest advantages are:

1. It’s much harder to detect: Because the identity doesn’t belong to a single real person, there’s no one to notice suspicious activity right away. Alerting tools may miss them too, especially if some of the data used is associated with someone whose credit file is inactive (like a child, an elderly person, even the homeless – all folks who are highly unlikely to check the status of their credit).
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2. Frankensteins build their own credit: Fraudsters using these accounts may apply for small lines of credit and pay on time, slowly raising the profile’s creditworthiness before eventually going after the bigger prizes. Along the way, no one’s complaining to the bank or credit bureaus about being denied because when the theft is so fragmented, no one notices. In the end, it’s about patience and playing the long game. Scammers taking that approach are far more likely to succeed.

 
CNET’s Neal O’Farrell says the way to watch out for this kind of identity theft is to keep an eye on your Social Security Number. Phone numbers and addresses can change; SSNs are static. So if Frankenstein’s SSN happens to be yours, well, you get the picture. O’Farrell specifically recommends these steps:

1. Freeze your credit reports. It’s both free and easy to do. And if you need to temporarily unfreeze your credit reports for a legitimate reason, that’s even easier.
   
   
2. Monitor your SSN. And the best way to do that is to create a “my Social Security” account. Launched in 2012 and recently beefed up from a credentials standpoint, set a reminder on your calendar and check in once a month. It’s not proactive, so it won’t alert you, but checking it regularly does allow you to see if the activity associated with your SSN looks normal. And creating an account yourself prevents anyone else from doing it, so there’s that.  
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3. Check your credit reports regularly. Weekly would be nice. Note that we’re not talking about checking your credit SCORE, we’re talking about checking your credit REPORTS. There are multiple ways to go about this. CNET explains the options.

 
Finally, consider the Federal Reserve Toolkit devoted to this subject, specifically, the Fed’s Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit. Aimed primarily at businesses and the payment industry, it contains plenty of information of value to any audience, including individuals and families. We asked them to rename it the “Frankenstein Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit,” but you can imagine how that went.
 
File all of the above under the folder named, “Reality, New.” We agree that it’s something of a pain, but ultimately it’s just about forming a few new habits.

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