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THE COMPUTING UNPLUGGED INTERVIEW
How to protect yourself from identity theft
By David Gewirtz
Last month, we brought you an interview with Wade Callison, an entrepreneur who's started a new networking company that claims to compete with the big brands. It was an interesting interview, but what got Wade in the door originally was his understanding of the issues of identity theft, an issue of great concern to everyone.
"Over 10 million Americans were victimized by identity theft last year."
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This month, I had the opportunity to conduct a follow-up interview with Wade, discussing many of the more scary aspects of identity theft -- and what you can do to protect yourself. Even though Wade did his best to milk the interview for all the PR value he could (he managed to work in 12 mentions of his company during the Q&A session), this is still a must read interview.
We recommend you print out a copy of this interview and carry it with you at all times. There's an EasyPrint button on the upper-right side of this page. If a store, agency, or office gives you a hard time about protecting your identity, give this to him or her to read. Denise and I are keeping a copy in each of our cars' glove compartments.
David: You've done a lot of work with identity theft. Can you give us some background?
Wade: Let me tell you a little about Sereniti so you understand why we care so much about identity theft and protecting consumers. Sereniti provides consumers and SOHO [Small Office, Home Office] customers with the same level of PC and networking support and security that the business world has enjoyed for decades. An area of particular concern for consumers is protecting their PCs and personal information.
As part of delivering a complete, secure and easy home networking solution, we examined the biggest threats to consumers, their personal information and their time. One of the things that came out of this analysis is that while providing multiple layers of defense to protect consumer home networks and digital assets was crucial, consumers still face a growing threat to their personal information and identities.
Identity theft is recognized as the fastest growing crime in the United States. The FTC [Federal Trade Commission] estimates that over 10 million Americans were victimized by identity theft last year.
To protect our customers from this threat, we partnered with AIG (American International Group, Inc.) to provide a $25,000 Identity Theft policy that will help our customers recover from this potentially devastating crime.
David: It seems like we're covering this topic more and more, and yet people still don't get the problem. Can you explain the scope of the problem?
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