Yellowknife (Mar 29/06) - Who you are and what you’re worth can be taken from you as easily as picking up a piece of paper.

The problem is that the paper picker-upper is someone out to steal your identity: a chequing or credit card account number on a banking machine chit, your address on an envelope, or anything else noted on what you have may thought was just a piece of trash.

But that trash can be a gold mine of information in the wrong hands.

The best line of defence to protect your identity is to shred unwanted papers and take precautions with your personal information, says a Yellowknife RCMP officer.

March is fraud awareness month. Police are using the opportunity to increase public perception about how prevalent identity theft is becoming.

“If we can educate people on how to protect themselves, it makes it difficult for people to glean this information and use it for criminal matters,” Const. Troy MacLean says.

Identity theft is a growing concern, especially when one’s personal information flows freely over the Internet and via mail correspondence.

“Unfortunately, there are people out there (who) we call dumpster divers, who will go looking for this information,” MacLean says. “You may not even know you have been targeted until you do a credit check.”

A good example would be the Visa cheques consumers often receive unsolicited through the mail, which may get tossed into the garbage without a second thought, he says.

“One of our main initiatives is to emphasize how important shredding is in our daily lives. Shredders should be in every home.”

Everything from monthly Visa statements to purchase receipts have the potential to be misused by a criminal, MacLean says.

A card number and the expiry date are all someone needs to go online to make unauthorized purchases.

“It can be as simple as that,” says MacLean.

Other information which should be safeguarded include birth dates and social insurance numbers.

In Yellowknife, MacLean says there have been several incidents of fraudulent Internet purchases.

Also in the North, there is an issue with people sending out counterfeit cashier cheques, called an advance fee scam.

“It is associated with those Nigerian form letters. They will send a cheque that appears legitimate,” MacLean says of the scam.

Police are also having problems with people overseas who are utilizing algorithms on computers.

“And there are criminal organizations online that are selling and disposing card numbers and PIN numbers,” he says.

“In Canada, we are having more instances of card readers, where an unethical teller will use a skimmer reader to skim your card for the information.”

At the first discrepancy, MacLean says the credit card company should be notified to correct the problem.

MacLean also cautions people about telephone fraud and people calling asking for personal information.

“It’s a lot easier for us to prevent it at first than to track these guys down when they are all over the world.

“If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” MacLean says.by Dorothy Westerman

Northern News Services