Welcome to our blog.  For the first blog I want to address some issues around IDs.

One of the things we hear the most from businesses is “we always know who we are dealing with, we check their ID and make a photocopy of the Drivers License for our records!” .

The attitude towards accepting a drivers license as a valid form of identity authentication continues to baffle me even though I should know better.  In doing some research recently, I found some stats put out by the Gartner Group regarding Identity Theft and trends.  The results are staggering but not surprising.  13% of identity thieves are able to walk into a DMV and get a “valid” drivers license that ties back to the victim.  An additional 18% of the thieves have a drivers license in their possession that passes tight scrutiny.

With over 10 Million REPORTED cases of identity theft in 2008, that there is over 3 million instances where the perpetrator is able to physically stand in front of you and provide you with a “valid” ID.  And this is just for the reported cases, it is known that the actual number is much higher.  The Channel 11 in Dallas, the CBS station, did an investigation last fall about how hard it is to get a counterfeit ID – in this article – it will amaze you just how easy it is to for a layman to obtain one, can you imagine how it is for a professional thief, and statistics tell us that the majority of the identity fraud is perpetrated by professionals, this is their job.

The FTC’s Red Flags Rule is in place to protect the identity theft victim, it simply states that you have a policy in place to do some due diligence to ensure that your clients and customers are who they say they are.   With almost a third of identity thieves having a fraudulent ID, do you think it is acceptable to just copy a drivers license?  I don’t.  And I think it is fair to say that the magnetic stripe readers that will print the info from a drivers license is a waste of time as well.  The majority of the counterfeit IDs will have the stripe programmed with the data that is on the card anyway.

The only way to be certain is to run an identity verification on the customer, offer up a few simple challenge questions that only they would know.  While I am hearing grumbling from businesses out there about Red Flags, I am thinking this is a good thing.  I have had several friends who have had thier identity stolen and if businesses had implemented a decent Red Flags Policy, the damage would have been severely minimized.  One of my friends was even charged with being a deadbeat dad and had his drivers license revoked for nonpayment of child support!   While in this case it was the government who messed up, can you imagine the liability with all the sue happy attorneys if something like this happened with your business or services helping to committ the crime when you could have stopped it?

Some people are saying it is far too complicated to check the identity of the customers.  Again, I must disagree.  I recently tested the verification at IDSure.org on myself.  It is simple to use and I had to really think to be sure to answer correctly.  I was impressed and now I use the ID Verification Service from IDSure.org and I am now a reseller.  With plans from $100 a month, you can cancel at any time, you can change plans at any time, AND -if you sign up before August 1st, 2009, they provide you with a starter kit, that is normally $500 for free that will have you up an running with a Red Flags Compliance Policy in about 15 minutes.

For $100, are you willing to risk non compliance with the FTCs Red Flags Rule Program and just accept a drivers license as your due diligence? Not me, no way.