Police officials in North Carolina charged a man with using a 3-year-old’s Social Security number to get phone and natural gas service.

Michael John Maris, 44, was charged with one count of identity theft and two counts of obtaining property by false pretense for allegedly stealing the girl’s identity and using it to get service with a local phone company and a natural gas supplier, according to MyFox.com.

The girl’s granddaughter, told deputies she became suspicious that someone had used the girl’s Social Security number when a collection was placed on the girl’s credit report for nonpayment of a utility bill.

For more information on how to prevent child identity theft, visit TrustedID’s information page.

According to the Canwest News Service, identity theft victims in Canada spent more than $150 million of their own money and spent 20 million hours to resolve the fraud in the past year.

The survey of more than 3,000 consumers, carried out in February by researchers at the McMaster eBusiness Research Center, found that victims (57 percent) do not know how they were victimized. In addition, the study showed that in-store shopping is riskier than online commerce, as 25 percent of cases were associated with business transactions conducted in person compared to 15 percent linked to online transactions. Debit card skimming operations made up another 13 percent of the cases.

The study says historically, 25 per cent of cases of identity fraud were committed by someone known to the victim, but the survey found this represented only seven per cent of all cases.

While the economic meltdown is causing problems for most, scammers are exploiting it for new fraud opportunities, say security experts.

The Chicago Tribune reports an increase in phishing, the scam that uses fake e-mails to get people to hand over personal financial information that can be used to commit identity theft.

Dave Marcus, director of security research at security company McAfee, says that the banking crisis, with its mergers and takeovers, gives scammers the opportunity to send out phishing e-mails claiming that personal account information is needed because of the changes. McAfee began seeing phishing reports related to the crisis shortly after the failure and sale of Washington Mutual Bank in late September.

A new survey shows that employees may jeopardize workplaces this holiday season as they shop for gifts online.

According to the newly released “Shopping on the Job: Online Holiday Shopping and Workplace Internet Safety” survey conducted on behalf of ISACA, a global, nonprofit association of IT professionals, four out of 10 Americans ages 18-24 will spend up to five hours shopping online using their work computer this holiday season. This same age group is the least worried about the vulnerability of their work computers, creating an increased risk of spam, viruses and phishing attacks in the workplace, said the survey.

Overall, 63 percent of people of all ages surveyed plan to shop online during the holiday season from their workplace computers. Older Americans are less likely to shop from work than those in the 18 to 24 group, who tend to worry less about the vulnerability of their work computer than their personal computer.

“This survey clearly shows that younger employees are more likely to engage in online activities at work that put a business’s IT infrastructure at risk,” said Kent Anderson of ISACA’s Security Management Committee

New types of payment methods, including mobile banking, pre-paid cards, and “virtual world” transactions, are expected to be a huge area of regulatory interest, according to a new survey of senior anti-money laundering (AML) compliance officers in North America and Europe, conducted by risk and compliance specialist Fortent.

Survey respondents also cited identity theft as “presenting the greatest emerging threat” to their institutions in the area of financial crime. Cited most often by respondents (52%) as the greatest emerging financial crime threat, identity theft was followed by:

* “Virtual world” payment systems (44%)
* Electronic checking (40%)
* Employee fraud (32%)
* Stored value cards (28%)