928Benz

I apologize for using this board for my personal problem, but I don't know who to ask about this. And I know from previous threads, that some of you are either lawyers or have knowledge of the law. Here is my problem. My G/F graduated from an accredited university. Just yesterday a letter comes in the mail stating that her Social security number and a whole lot of other personal information has been used by a student for fraudulent purposes. That student has been caught and is no longer on campus, and the UNIVERSITY'S police are handling the situation. The university recommends contacting credit agencies to check for discrepancies. End of letter, no apology.
The next day, she tries to get a credit report and cannot because her answers don't match the questions regarding payments and debtors. The agency will mail it. Seems like this person has already done some serious damage. She then contacts university officials to get more details and find out who the culprit is. However, they refrain from giving out any additional information on the details of how the student received and used her personal invormation. They said it was a matter of privacy for the student who stole her information and used it for personal gain. What the heck? A matter of privacy? What about the victim's privacy? Anyway, it seems that the university wants to cover it up and prevent any kind of publicity regarding the matter. My question is can the university be liable for identity theft? Again, I apologize for using this board. I just don't know who to ask and what kind of lawyer she would need if even. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Randy V

By all means, feel free to turn to your 928 'family' for their insights.

I'm sure someone here can help - perhaps mention the State this took place in.

Big Dave

Lawyer here.

The first thing you do is contact the attorney general's office in your state. Most states have specific agencies or task forces that are dedicated to identity theft issues.

In what state are you located? I'm in a fairly large firm (100+) and could probably get you the name of a lawyer in your state who could help you (1) pressure the university to release the identity of the thief and (2) make sure that the proper credit reporting agencies have been notified and have made the appropriate notations on her credit report.

It definitely sounds like the university is trying to cover its own rear end.

I don't have specific information regarding the process of prosecuting and/or suing the thief, but I know that there are many web sites that address the issue.

You can also try contacting your local police department, but they probably won't know how to handle it, either.

Try asking the university how they caught this individual. The university could be liable if they breached a confidentiality obligation to your girlfriend. Again, this would ultimately be a question better answered by a lawyer with experience in this type of matter.

By the way, you are entitled to a free copy of your credit report any time you are turned down for credit, identity theft or not.

Even if you can find out who did it, chances are that if it's a student, they've got no money you could sue for anyway.

I hope you can straighten everything out with as little hassle as possible.

KBlair

Personally, I think we should all sue the Federal Gub'ment for negligence, specifically allowing the Social Security number to become a financial identification number. If memory serves me correctly, the original SS laws specifically stated that the number was not to be used for identification. It says so on the card also, I think. I also think that the whole credit reporting industry is a scam. Think about it. These companies are selling our personal data without our permission, sometimes to anybody who askes for it. We should at least be able to access our own records anytime we want without cost or reason. It's our data, but we aren't allowed access to it without "reason" or without paying a fee. I also think the big 3 credit agencies should notify us of activity on our history, such as an unusual number of inquiries within a given period. I know there are monitoring services out there, but why should we have to pay for it when it's supposed to be our data they are archiving?

Sorry, but these two topics really crawl my a$$

tdelarm

How about this...I think we should get a cut of the profits made from the sale of our personal information anytime it's sold...residual checks if you will…kind of like the government getting a cut of the action when we sell each other our sharks…sales tax…how many times does the government need to get paid for an item getting sold???

O’h well…it probably doesn’t matter much anyway as now I hear for the first time in five years the U.S. is once again in the Red…no more surplus…all this kind of makes me wonder how “Bush” spent his surplus rebate check??? Hahahahahahahahah I know I spent mine on the Sharks sales tax…damn!

Tim Delarm
<img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" /> <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" /> <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" /> <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" /> <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" />
"Look...^^^^^^^^it's the dancing hammers!"

KBlair

Technically, the US has been in the red even during the past 5 years. If have a national debt greater than $0, then we are in the red. How's that for conservative accounting practices! The Gub'ment is so large and wastes so much money on beuraucracy, I don't even want to go there. It makes my head hurt, and my pocketbook.

928Benz

Thanks everybody for all your insight. I felt kind of bad posting this topic, as I would much rather be talking about my shark, but this is really a burden to deal with. Big Dave, the university is in MA. My girlfriend and I have have been going through the telephone book trying to find out what kind of attorneys deal with this sort of thing. We really need a referral to someone who practices in the Boston area. I really appreciate all the info and help you guys can give. Thanks again

Big Dave

928Benz:

I'll put the smoke signal up at the office here and see if I can get a name for ya. Always feels good to help out a brother shark owner.

BD

Herr Schnell

I saw your message -- coincidentally someone at my firm was asking the same question this week. Although the Q&A was more practically oriented than legal, the following reply might be of some interest to you. The usual disclaimers apply -- this is not legal advice, no atty-client relationship created, etc. Hope it helps a little.

Dan

"The best thing to do is call all the credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian
and TransUnion and have them put a fraud alert under the SS# This way,
when someone tries to open a line of credit, they will call your client
first to verify it is him and not this other person.
Also, order a copy of the credit report from each agency - this way
your client find all recent activity and call the banks/stores/credit card
companies where credit was opened without his authorization and notify
them of what is going on.

Your client also will need to call all of his own credit card companies
and banks and notify them of what happened.

Then, call the Social Security Fraud hotline and the Federal Trade
Commission Identity theft hotline so they can be on alert as well.

The FTC website ( <a href="http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/" target="_blank">http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/</a> ) also has some tips
on identity theft.

The numbers for everything are:

Social Security Fraud Hotline: 1-800-269-0271
FTC Fraud Hotline: 1-877-438-4338
Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
Experian: 1-888-397-3742
TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289"