According to a recent article by Michael Higgins, ABA Journal, October 1998, thousands of criminals quietly discovered what in an increasingly cashless society had become an almost perfect crime; identity theft. By posing as someone else, identity thieves found, they could steal in a way that left victims powerless and police uninterested.

Today, identity theft is still a vibrant and growing criminal enterprise, but its cover has been blown and the Harris County Sheriff's Department is working hard to make arrest and to alert the public. Federal officials are holding summits and seminars to alert people about this crime while the State legislators are pushing for tougher criminal penalties.

1. Review your Billing Statements! Make note of any unauthorized transactions.
2. Do not lend out your credit card. If you give authorization for use at any point, credit card abuse charges may not apply. It becomes a civil matter.
3. For Employers providing company credit cards, formulate a policy that clearly specifies to the employee what the credit cards are to be used for and put it in writing. Then, have the employee sign and date the document.
4. Sales receipts. Before discarding receipts, block out your credit card number.
5. Do not leave mail in your mailbox for any length of time. Stop your mail before leaving for vacation. Mail left in a mailbox is a good source of personal information.
6. Periodically, get a copy of your credit report to check to see if the information is accurate.
7. If your card is used, ask card issuer to provide locations of usage.
8. Do not give out personal information unless absolutely necessary and never over a cellular telephone. Information can be intercepted.
9. Shred, Shred, Shred, and Shred. If a document is not needed – then shred it now. Do you know where your personal trash ends up?
10. Do not give out your Social Security Number unless it is specifically needed.
11. Your maiden name, birth date, past addresses or driver’s license number should be protected at all cost.

1. Ordering credit reports.
2. Digging through garbage.
3. Stealing mail.
4. Snatching purses.
5. Learning it from the victim from resumes or family genealogies posted on line.
6. Listening to cellular telephone conversations.

Skimming is a method of counterfeiting initially developed by criminals to circumvent the CVV on valid bankcards. A concise definition of skimming is "the replication of track data to allow or enable valid authorization to occur. What this means in practice is that criminals copy full Track 1 and Track 2 information from a valid credit card. This data is then encoded on counterfeit or lost and stolen cards, and results in issuers’ approving fraudulent transactions with reproduced track data.

As the circumstances in which skimming may occur have evolved, the term "skimmed counterfeit fraud" now refers to any situation in which electronically transmitted or stored account data is replicated and used to crease counterfeit cards with seemingly valid magnetic stripes.

As both criminal and transaction processing systems become more sophisticated, the opportunities for gaining access to valuable account information have multiplied. While the details of individual frauds may vary, skimming scenarios generally fall into three basic categories – track data compromised:

1. At the merchant.
2. As the information passes from one entity to another in the authorized process and
3. When it is stored.