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Appalachian student, victim of identity theft, shares experience |
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series on identity theft.
by JAMISON DORAN
News Reporter
Alexander S. Witten, a sophomore management major, couldn’t believe it when his parents called him about a year ago to tell him he had overdrafted his bank account.
“I had no idea that it had happened and then, out of the blue, my parents called and asked me why I had no money in my account,” Witten said.
Witten had become the victim of identity theft, joining the likes of
millions of individuals. Witten went through a long process in order to
get his money back.
“The first thing I did was call Wachovia and that whole process took at least a couple of hours,” he said.
At first, the people at Wachovia didn’t believe Witten had been the victim of identity theft.
“In regards to students, sometimes banks have a hard time believing
them, at least at first, because they can be more likely to overdraft
on their accounts,” Paul Stephens, a policy analyst for the Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse, said.
However, after talking to several different people, Wachovia employees
determined Witten hadn’t made the transactions that had caused his bank
account to go into the red.
“After comparing the transactions I had made to the transactions that
had been made by whoever took my information, it was obvious that I
hadn’t made the purchases,” Witten said.
While there were only four transactions that had been made, they added up to nearly $500.
The one transaction that particularly stood out was for plane tickets to Barcelona, Spain.
“It was pretty obvious that I hadn’t bought plane tickets from inside
of Europe to go to Barcelona, especially since I’m not in Europe,”
Witten said.
After filling out a significant amount of paperwork along with more
calls to Wachovia, the situation was finally resolved. All the money
was put back in Witten’s account, and he received a new debit card.
“Even though it was all taken care of, it’s still really scary,” he said.
Witten said the scariest thing about it was that someone who he didn’t
know had his personal and private information, and he wasn’t even able
to know all of the information this person had.
“To this day, I still don’t know who did it, and I don’t know how they got my information,” he said.
Witten said while he’s always thought of himself as fairly cautious with his personal information, he’s even more so now.
He is particularly cautious when making purchases and even when ordering a pizza from The Pizzeria.
“They ask you for your Social Security number over the phone, which is something that I don’t feel
comfortable with, so I always just go and pick it up myself and have them run my card,” Witten said.
Stephens said protecting your Social Security number is an important way to avoid identity theft.
“The key to protecting yourself from identity theft is to guard your Social Security with all that you have,” he said.
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