The Delicious Cost of Identity Theft

Brian Cristol carries a free Subway sandwich and Domino's pizza on his way to class. The fourth year American Studies major has found out how to get lunch without paying a cent. Yet the cost is something greater than money-it's his identity.

This summer, UC Berkeley summer session students have embraced the credit card industry, making the street-side credit card application process a routine activity in exchange for free T-shirts and food.

Competing companies have lined the streets with marketers who say they have contracts to market credit cards for financial corporations such as Citibank.

"Students are always hungry and they have no money," says Cristol. "It's a good thing."

Yet Detective Michael Pyle of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office High Technology Crimes Unit says when the cost is giving away one's identity, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Providing personal information to a third party in a transaction, especially a social security number, can make one a prime candidate for identity theft, says Pyle, who receives all reports of identity theft in Alameda County.

The allure of a free pizza or sandwich has kept students swarming the credit card application booths located conveniently in front of Ned's Bookstore on Bancroft Way and C'est Cafe and Greg's Pizza on Telegraph Avenue, leading up to the campus' south entrance for more than a month.

The booths set up shop during peak lunchtime hours, and are able to solicit scores of students an hour to apply for credit by posing the question: "Would you like a free pizza today?"

Driven by their appetites, students who are veterans of the process can fill out two to three forms in under five minutes without asking questions or reading the fine print.

Cristol fills out credit card applications with two competing marketing companies in one day, earning him two lunches and a T-shirt.

The forms come in different shapes, colors and sizes, but all ask for the same information. Citibank's student credit card application, for example, requires a name, temporary and permanent address, phone number, date of birth, e-mail, a relative's name and phone number, a digital picture of a student identification card and, most troubling to identity theft experts, a social security number.

College students are a target for identity theft because they don't realize the dangers of giving out their personal information, explains Jay Foley, co-executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit San Diego-based organization that assists identity theft victims in recovering and restoring their names.

"College students sometimes appear to be dumber than a box of rocks," says Foley, who can name several students who have been identity theft victims after giving out their social security numbers at places like football games and county fairs to credit card marketers.

Oftentimes marketers sell victims' personal information to identity thieves before sending it off to their respective credit card companies, Foley says.

"Sometimes marketers get a minimum hourly wage with a bonus for every application above a certain number," Foley says. "But nothing's quite as good as me saying I'll give you X amount of dollars for every application you photograph."

People who steal identities often sell them on the black market to help others gain employment, Pyle says.

California law defines identity theft as taking someone else's personal information and using it to do something without the individual's consent.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, California had 37,000 reported incidents of identity theft last year-26 percent of the victims were between the ages of 18 and 29.

"Identity theft in my view is the hardest crime to solve," says Pyle.

Yet the dangers move beyond the initial transaction.

While trying to convince students that their offers are nonbinding, marketers explain that the personal identification requested is merely to obtain information about credit in the mail-contradicting the message on the side of the Citibank form reading "Thank you for your credit card application."

In addition, marketers often repeat the phrase: "You can just throw away the offer when you get it in the mail."

According to Pyle, this practice increases the risk of becoming an identity theft victim. Throwing away an application is the worst thing someone can do with a credit card offer, he says.

The greatest source of identity theft is obtaining personal information through intercepted mail, says Pyle-a tactic he calls "dumpster diving."

Anyone who gets a hold of that offer can apply for a card in the victim's name and change the address, leaving the victim unaware of the credit debt that someone is gathering under his or her name.

Unwanted credit card offers should be shredded, Pyle says.

The best way to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft is merely to avoid giving out a social security number, says Pyle-the more personal information given, the greater the risk.

Giving a fake social security number to avoid the true number is also not recommended, says Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Mark Jackson. A person who willingly uses a social security number that belongs to someone else could be charged with identity theft, Jackson says.

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