While identity theft is a major problem nationally, a number of Boston University students said they do not worry about it.
“I realize that it could happen easily, but so could a hurricane,” said Kathleen McKay, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman. “There is nothing you can do about either. I think everyone knows how to prevent identity theft.”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission collects more reports of identity theft from those aged 20–29 than any other age range, according to a Reuters report published Thursday.
However, BU Police Department Detective Lt. Peter DiDomenica said they only handle about a dozen cases of identity theft a year.
“We haven’t really seen that much of it overall, so I would say it’s not a major issue although it does come up occasionally,” he said. “It depends on how broadly you define identity theft. If someone steals a credit card and uses it, that’s technically identity theft, although I think what people think of when they think identity theft is taking over your personality and applying for loans and using your credit.”
DiDomenica said very few cases of strict identity theft occur, but larcenies of wallets and purses often end in others using the victim’s credit cards and debit cards.
Emillie Ficarra, a College of General Studies freshman, said she does not normally make purchases with credit cards and is cautious, but said there could be more information available for how students can protect themselves.
“We could probably use a little more proactive information, such as meetings or even pamphlets, so we can better protect ourselves against the possibility of it happening,” she said.
BU separated financial information from student’s information about residences, said BU spokesman Colin Riley.
“It’s all preventative, it’s all to make sure that student’s information isn’t compromised but the danger exists,” he said.
Jessica Li, a School of Engineering junior, said in terms of BU ID, she isn’t worried about losing her identity.
“Identity theft in my opinion isn’t too common because once you lose a card, most students replace their cards within a couple of days at the most, maybe even one day because they need to use their card for most of everything around campus,” she said.
Li, an IT employee for BU, said the Terrier Card Office deactivates lost cards once a student replaces it.
DiDomenica said that beyond identity theft the culture of acting as someone else on social media can be a problem as well.
“We deal not infrequently with students who have their [social media] accounts compromised, and it’s not done for financial reasons, but more personal reasons so it becomes a much larger issue because people want to tell the world about themselves,” he said. “So before you put info on the Internet, you have to understand anyone in the world can know this information.”
BUPD Captain Robert Molloy said identity theft is easily preventable if students are careful about how they give out information and who they give it to.
“Don’t do it over the Internet, don’t give that information over during a telephone call,” he said. “If anyone’s asking for those pieces of information, that should raise your level of suspicion.”
Megan Kirk contributed to the reporting of this article.
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