Who stole my identity?

Savvy cyber thieves working in a dank basement that doubles as a meth lab?

or

A moderately resourceful and totally unscrupulous family member who used my social to start a credit card?

When we think about identity theft, we often imagine the former, but according to a recent story in the New York Times, “[The] identity thief is often found in the family photo.”

While I hesitate to throw another log on the media’s ID theft bonfire, I found this story to be one of the more level-headed examples of ID theft reportage out there.

The Times says that while most identity thieves aren’t identified, nearly half that are turn out to be family members, friends or in-home employees.

Times reporter John Leland tells a harrowing story in which a divorced mother used the social security numbers of her two children to open credit card accounts.

“When my kids turn 18 and go to college, they’re not going to be able to buy a car or get a student loan because they’ve got bad credit,” the father of the two kids told the times. “No one’s going to rent them an apartment. They’re going to be turned down for jobs because there’s so many companies that run credit histories.”

(The mother is now in jail.)

So what to do with this information? I hate to think of a world of rife with intra-family paranoia (“I can tell Uncle Bob is out to steal my identity!”).

We’re loathe to think that anyone who shares our genetic makeup or who has earned our trust would be capable of such a thing, but the sobering reality is that it makes sense.

ID Theft Resources
Don’t believe the hype! While it’s important to take the threat seriously, you should also take any ID theft stat with a big grain of salt.

Motley Fool writer Dayana Yochim has good advice on how to prevent ID theft and, failing prevention, how to get it back after it has been stolen.