Creative Guide for Teachers & Parents

SUBJECT & DISCUSSION IDEA #5 - Keep your personal information private - and protect your identity

Are you at risk for identity theft? Here are some important questions to ask yourself:

1) Do you carry your Social Insurance Number in your wallet?
2) Do you throw your balance statements and receipts in the garbage?
3) Have you revealed your PIN to your friends?
4) Do you choose passwords that are common and easy to guess?

If you responded "yes" to any of these questions you are in danger of being the victim of identity theft!

Some statistics involving identity theft from a recent survey¹:

• 1.7 million Canadians were affected by identity theft in 2008
• While more than 45% of cases of identity theft involve Internet use, most identity thieves don't use cyberspace to acquire information.
• 40% of offenders are women - this may be attributed to the absence of violence and the possibility of committing the crime without help from an accomplice.
• The average age of an identity thief is 33 years.
• 64.6% of the offenders acted alone in the majority of cases.
• 53.4% of incidents involve the theft of wallets and purses, and fraud.

It turns out that many people choose to steal identities simply because it's easy. Identity theft has one of the fastest growing crime rates seen in recent years.

Discussion idea:

Students from John F. Ross CVI in Guelph sent in a video for our 2008 video contest entitled " It's Your Life...And Your Privacy" which takes the viewer through the mindset of an Identity thief and how easy it is to be tricked into giving out information over the Internet. See the video, which won third-place in the 2008 contest here. Discuss the video and the facts about identity theft with your young people.

1. Statistics from Benoît Dupont and Guillaume Louis's second report ("Identity thieves: a common delinquency profile") from the Université de Montréal's Canada Research Chair in Security, Identity and Technology.