Identity Angel is Working to Protect You ... and You Don't Even Know It

I heard about this on NPR this afternoon. Carnegie Mellon has developed this program, that crawls through the Internet and searches for data that might be used for ID theft. If it finds sufficient information for a person to have their ID stolen, that person is notified by email.

... the work presented herein focuses specifically on acquiring information sufficient to fraudulently acquire a new credit card using on-line resumes. An imposter needs to learn the {name, Social Security Number, address, date of birth} of a subject. Results show how resumes containing needed information can automatically be found and values harvested, and how many subjects removed such information from the Web once notified. Source: Identity Angel Project Site

According to the report on NPR, they have paused the project, because they have already found 5000 subjects, and they need to manage the amount of responses they will have to handle. They have focused on resumes because, according to a spokesperson, they found the info necessary to obtain a credit card on several resumes during initial stages of the project. Interestingly, initial tests of the program resulted in some people sending nasty emails back to the project, believing the project's email was some sort of scam. To be honest, I probably would have ignored it.

On the other hand, as someone who's had his ID stolen more than once, and who subscribes to a credit monitoring service rather than rely on the free report I can get annually, this sounds like a great idea. So far, so good ... no emails for me!

Tags: Security, ID Theft, Software, Technology