Thursday, April 05, 2007

To catch an identity thief

"Dateline" has been jumping all over child predators and after more than a dozen shows, they've finally moved on.

Now, the show is targeting identity thieves. We all knew how out of control this problem is, but I don't think I had any idea of the scope of this crime.

Last week, they showed how a credit card could be maxed out in seconds by identity thieves. This week, Chris Hansen travels to Africa to track down the ID thieves.

It's shocking how quickly and how methodically they work. And their No 1 target is Americans. Chris points out that ID thieves could even be your waiter (you know how you send that credit card away to get your bill paid? If the waiter is an ID thief, you've given him a ticket to your account) or even people who books your airplane tickets whomever.

It's enough to give all us pause.

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