unit3 stolen identity

UNIT3

Stolen identity

1 "Frank never went to pilot school, medical school, law school, ... because he's still in high school."

2 That was the strapline（标语） of the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, which tells the story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio), a brilliant young master of deception（欺骗，骗术）who at different times impersonated（扮演，模仿） a doctor, a lawyer, and an airplane pilot, forging（伪造） checks worth more than six million dollars in 26 countries. He became the youngest man to ever make the FBI's most-wanted list for forgery（伪造罪）. Hunted and caught in the film by fictional （虚构的） FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), Abagnale later escaped. He eventually became a consultant（顾问）for the FBI where he focused on white-collar（白领） crime.

3 It's a great film, but could it happen in real life? In fact, Catch Me If You Can is based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, whose career as a fraudster（骗子）lasted about six years before he was caught, who escaped from custody（羁押）three times (once through an airplane toilet), and who spent a total of six years in prison in France, Sweden and the US. He now runs a consultancy（顾问工作）advising the world of business how to avoid fraud（诈骗）. He has raised enough money to pay back all his victims, and is now a multi-millionaire.

4 Since 2003, identity theft has become increasingly common. Few people could imagine how important things like taking mail to the post office and not leaving it in the mailbox for pickup, shredding（撕碎） documents instead of throwing them out with the trash, even using a pen costing a couple of bucks（元，复数）, have become to avoid life-changing crimes.

5 More and more people are becoming anonymous（匿名的） victims of identity theft. We spend many hours and dollars trying to recover（恢复，弥补） our name, our credit, our money and our lives. We need to look for different ways to protect ourselves. We can improve our chances of avoiding this crime, but it will never go away.

6 It's not just a list of do's and don'ts, we need to change our mindset（心态，习惯）. Although online banking is now commonplace（司空见惯）, there's a significant group of people in the country—the baby boomers（婴儿一代）, 15 per

cent of the population—who still prefer to use paper. What's more, 30 per cent of cases of fraud occur within this group. A check has all the information about you that an identity thief needs. If you use a ballpoint pen（圆珠笔）, the ink can be removed with the help of a regular household chemical and the sum of money can be changed. More than 1.2 million bad checks are issued every day, more than 13 per second.

7 Check fraud is big business ... and growing by 25 per cent every year. Criminals count on（指望，依靠） our mistakes to make their jobs easier. So how can we prevent identity theft before it happens to us?

8 Take a few precautions（预防措施）. Don't leave your mail in your mailbox overnight or over the weekend. Thieves wait for the red flag to go up, so they can look through your outgoing mail for useful personal information or checks. Use a gel pen（签字笔） for checks and important forms, the ink is trapped in the fibre of the paper, and it can't be removed with chemicals. Also, shred or tear up（撕毁） all documents which contain personal information before you put them in the trash.

9 Remember that there are plenty of online opportunities for thieves to create a false identity based on your own. We're all aware of the risks to personal information on computer databases by hacking（黑客） and Trojan horses（特洛伊木马）. But choosing someone and doing a Google search can also yield（透露） large amounts of personal information, and so can online social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. And just as we take our pocketbook with us when we leave the office to go to the bathroom, it's also worth logging off（退出） your computer to avoid opportunistic（机会主义的） theft.

10 Finally, if you get robbed in a more traditional way—in the street—canceling your credit cards is obviously the first thing to do. But don't forget that even after

they're reported lost, they can be used as identification to acquire store cards ... and you get the criminal record.

11 Identity fraud can go on for years without the victim's knowledge. There is no escaping the fact that right now fraudsters are finding identity crime all too easy. If you haven't had your identity stolen, it's only because they haven't got to you yet. Your turn will come.