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Corporations Are Victims Too
Posted on Apr 21, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
With all the warnings to individuals about preventing identity theft, corporations don’t get much attention but they can be victims just as easily. Corporations make good targets when their financial information is easy to obtain and they don’t have a solid checks and balance system in place.
A well-known corporation issued an interoffice memo the other day explaining that the company’s credit had been used fraudulently to make unauthorized purchases. The thieves also stole bank account information to create fake corporate checks through check printing companies via the internet, forged coporate checks and attempted to debit the company’s bank accounts electronically.
The company previously was lax in giving out their bank account numbers, as many companies are, because it is an important part of doing business with vendors and subcontractors. All that has now changed with their new policy – all employees are instructed not to give out any credit information and to send any requests for it to the company’s Treasury Dept. Unfortunately, it only takes one employee, vendor or subcontractor to slip up and jeopardize the company’s security.
Filed under: Fraud, Identity Theft
Tags: corp, identitytheft, idtheft
Comments
Hardas K Kripalani on Apr 22, 2007
Fraudulent checks on corporate accounts have been known to exist for long before individuals’ identity theft became a widespread problem. Corporate credit cards fall into the same category too. These may be frauds, but they do not fall under the same category as identity theft. No one can steal identity of a corporation or any non-individual legal entity in the same sense as an individual’s identity.
As I stated by me before, the root cause for individuals’ identity being stolen is the fact that use of Social Security numbers is being freely and widely allowed both for credit granting and credit reporting purposes. Social Security numbering system is designed for government use at tax payers’ cost. Its use for non-government purposes, such as credit granting and credit reporting, should be TOTALLY BANNED. If there were no Social Security numbers floating around for credit granting and credit reporting purposes there is NO IDENTITY TO BE STOLEN. There may still be sporadic instances of frauds of someone impersonating and another with established credit record, in the same sense that there have been long existing frauds against corporate and other non-individual entities, but not WHOLESALE THEFT OF AN INDIVIDUAL’S IDENTITY. If the credit grantors and credit reporting agencies were to establish their own system of identifying an individual, other than asking for an individual’s Social Security number, they would be more careful of preventing such frauds. Until laws can be passed and enforced for banning the use of Social Security numbers for credit granting and credit reporting purposes, government should at least allow some reprieve to identity theft victims by banning any collection activity and adverse credit granting decisions, based solely on an individual’s Social Security number.
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