With Identity theft losses mounting, state and Federal legislation has been passed that has stringent penalties and jail time for business owners who are not in compliance. Because 87% of business owners are not even aware of these laws, what you don't know can hurt you. Maybe $1,000,000 in fines and up to 10 years in jail will motivate you to secure all the personal information of your clients and employees. Experts are predicting that identity breaches will be THE next hot class action target so listen and learn.

Disgruntled workers with access to their employer's data files can make a lot of money selling little pieces of you. They can sell your Social Security number Identity for $100, they can sell your credit card info (financial identity) and they can also sell your driver's license identity which will have a negative impact on your character/criminal identity if they decide to rob a liquor store and get caught with "your" driver's license. You already know about the dangers of medical identity theft if you saw any of the 3 Reader's Digest covers from 2006.

The Feds recently decided that the DMVs of each state needed to be able to recognize what the actual driver's licenses of all other states looked like. The Feds made up a little book with the EXACT specifications on each state's driver's license. About a week after that book was distributed, it was already being sold on the internet. A new industry has been born due to that book. All a criminal needs is a computer, printer, laminator and that book to have a prosperous criminal enterprise. The police can not tell the difference between the "real" license and the fake one. The authorities can't distinguish between the "data base you" and the you your friends know"data base you" and the you who is looking at yourself in the mirror. The data base you has gone on a crime spree and given the police a copy of a driver's license with YOUR number and another address on it. You never get the notice to appear and they sure aren't going to show up at your trail, so a bench warrant goes out in your name. The next time you are stopped for some routine traffic violation, the real you is going to jail. How many times do the criminals say, "OK, you got me." Isn't the regular drill something like, "You've got the wrong guy. It wasn't me." Except this time it WAS the data based you.

Only one in 700 criminals engaged in ID theft are caught. This crime wave has no end in sight. Employee absenteeism can really hurt the bottom line. The Federal Trade Commission estimates it takes 600 hours to restore your identity. That is 15 40 hour work weeks. Who has that kind of time? ALL the data leaks are coming from ignorance on the part of businesses or the government themselves. The Census Bureau is very proud that they have ONLY lost 1,200 lap top computers with millions of names and personal information on American citizens. Because the government can't do anything on the criminal front, they are clamping down on businesses.

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