The popular identity theft protection service, LifeLock, seems to be everywhere these days. Now, the LifeLock team is working with the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association to create summits on identity theft to benefit police officers.
These summits, which will take place over the summer, will cover the following topics:
*Methods used for investigation
*New and emerging methods of identity theft
*Current identity theft trends
The first round of these free summits started in October of 2008. Since then, they’ve been held in 21 different cities in the United States. Over 700 law enforcement agencies and over 2,200 officers have attended them.
The importance of these free training is threefold. First, officers learn to recognize identity theft when it occurs. Second, they learn new techniques for preventing the crime and catching the perpetrators. Finally, they learn how to support victims in an effective way.
It could be thanks to this training that Albert Gonzalez was finally convicted and tried for stealing 40 million card numbers from popular retail and restaurant chains. Gonzalez was ultimately sentenced to spend 20 years in jail for his crimes.
This brings up a good point, that if you are a victim of identity theft, or your purse, wallet or laptop computer gets stolen, it’s important to contact the police in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. If you don’t do that and simply cancel your license and credit cards and move on instead, law enforcement will have no record of the crime occurring. With the crime logged, as well as statements from you and any witnesses, it’s more likely that the identity thief – or traditional thief – will be caught.
Most thieves don’t operate just one time and then give up on their line of work. Your thief could be linked to several other crimes, and you reporting her could be just what law enforcement needs in order to finally prosecute. If you have an identity theft protection service and your plan alerts you to potential fraud, the company may contact law enforcement for you. It’s up to you to read the terms of your policy to see if that is the case.
LifeLock certainly is one such company.