By Emilia Benton

I recently read an article detailing how a Queens County-based forged credit card and identity theft ring was successfully dismantled following the arrests of 38 people who were allegedly involved. The ring allegedly stole the personal credit information of countless American consumers, costing them, as well as retail businesses and financial institutions, over $1 million in the past year.

Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing consumer crimes in America. Rather than stealing your money, identity thieves steal your name and reputation in order to use them to prosper financially themselves. Identity thieves literally steal who you are and can seriously damage your financial future. If someone accumulates thousands of dollars in unauthorized debt, leaving you with a destroyed credit rating, the reality is that you, the victim, are left to clean up the mess, as well as attempt to re-create your good name and credit record. This can take months or even years to correct.

As college students, we’re likely to fall into the false mentality that we’re invincible regarding identity theft. After all, being a poor college student with no assets to protect makes us free from such threats, right?

Wrong. Quite surprisingly, students are even more vulnerable to identity theft because of the availability of our personal data and the carefree manner in which many of us handle this data.

College students receive credit card applications on a daily or weekly basis. Many of them go unused, but most students probably don’t give much thought to the importance of properly destroying them. Be sure to tear up or shred applications that you don’t plan to use. Additionally, shred your bank statements after you are done reviewing them, and don’t let the mail pile up in your dorm room or mailbox.

Another mistake that students frequently make is rarely, if ever, reviewing their credit card and checking account balances. This is dangerous because if you don’t keep track of your purchases and don’t even save your receipts, it can be very difficult for you to contest or even identify purchases that you in fact did not make yourself.

There are various other daily activities that expose college students to this crime, including making online banking transactions, shopping online for airline tickets and retail purchases, storing personal information on your computer, as well as some that are seemingly virtually unavoidable, such as using a cell phone and having student loans, and lastly, the most obvious one that we are quick to connect with identity theft-using your Social Security number for identification. I’ve read that there are schools that post student grades by social security number; thankfully the University is not one of them. If you find yourself in a group situation in which they choose to identify you by your SSN, your best bet would be to request an alternative identification number, because you can never be too stingy when it comes to sharing this piece of information. Any of the information you give up for the aforementioned activities make you fair game for someone looking to commit fraud.

I’m lucky in that my dad has made sure to warn me about the threat of identity theft from day one since I left college. Thankfully, I don’t have a nightmarish anecdote of my own to share regarding identity theft. However, I did have a minor brush with the type of fear that comes with your information being out there.

Last summer, after I landed my first internship, I was busy applying here and there for a part-time job in Manhattan. Once I got my job at Barnes and Noble, I didn’t give the other jobs I applied for a second thought-until I got a letter in the mail from Gap, Inc. much later last fall. The letter stated that a computer had been stolen from their offices that contained the personal information of 800 applicants, mine included. They provided me with a free credit-monitoring service for one year, which I have been diligently checking since then. Additionally, I am much more cautious about when and where I provide my personal and credit card information.

A little-known fact is that all consumers are allowed free access to their credit report once a year at www.annualcreditreport.com, which will let you know if anyone is opening accounts in your name. However, if you think your personal information has been compromised, you should contact a credit reporting firm such Experian, Equifax or TransUnion to sign up for a credit monitoring program.

Regardless of whether you feel you have anything to worry about, be sure to take any future warnings regarding identity theft to heart. Remember-no one but yourself can protect you from identity theft.

Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].