Deborah Woehr

When I logged on to my email yesterday morning, I wasn’t prepared for the nasty surprises that waited for me. Someone from Indonesia had managed to get my PayPal password so they could buy a couple of cell phones on Ebay. They committed this crime a mere fifteen minutes before I woke up, robbing me of $357. So far, thanks to PayPal, I was able to get a refund on one of these illegal purchases. I’m still waiting for the resolution of the other.

While this is very upsetting, I consider myself lucky (although I’m still very nervous). To give you a little more of my background, I used to work in the records department of my local police department. Part of my job was to enter in the police reports as they came in. This one poor guy was dealing with an identity thief, who racked up close to $1M in credit card debt, buying all kinds of electronic equipment. I don’t know if this case was ever resolved, but it shocked me enough to where I’ll always remember it.

Technology has made it extremely easy for criminals to rob people blind and get away with it. I’m not just talking about the Internet either. I recently read a news article about how employees of grocery stores rig the ATM machines so they can lift the PIN number of your card as you pay for your groceries. There have been stories where someone breaks into a doctor’s office to steal the computers, specifically to get the social security numbers of the doctor’s patients.

I was thinking about all of these stories yesterday while I was at work, as well as the part in Revelations where it is predicted that people will be forced to have a microchip implanted in them that holds all of their financial and medical information. Twelve years ago, I sloughed this prediction off as paranoia. Today, I think this prediction has an excellent chance of becoming a reality.

Be careful.