How they get your details

Slack procedures

Institute of Professional Investigators president Trevor Morley (pictured right) knows more than most about how people go about stealing identities. He believes slack procedures in government departments help identity thieves.

"I can go to Births Deaths and Marriages and get your birth certificate, and with that birth certificate I can go and get a driver's licence in your name. Now you've got a piece of plastic that 99 percent of New Zealanders will accept as your identification."

Trevor says passport applications are checked against death records but drivers' licence applications are not. "So you've got a problem that whilst you can do certain things to protect your identity, you've got government departments issuing documents in your name without your knowledge and there's nothing you can do about it."

Getting a copy of an Australian birth certificate is much more difficult than getting one here. In New South Wales, birth certificates are only available to the person named on the certificate, their parents or an authorised representative. Applicants also show three forms of identification. In Victoria the birth records are unrestricted after 75 years, but not if the person is still living.

Here it's a doddle. Anyone can purchase a certificate by providing a few details identifying the person and paying $26. No identification is needed and you can do it by mail order, phone, e-mail or fax. It's the same for marriage, civil union and death certificates - for less than $100 you can collect the set.

Marguerite Fahy, senior communications advisor for the Department of Internal Affairs' Identity Services, says birth certificates are not intended to be used as a form of identification.

But Land Transport New Zealand accepts them as primary identification for a driver's licence, and only requires some addressed mail as secondary ID.

This is a clear case of one government organisation contradicting another, and shows that both organisations need to tighten their rules and do it quickly.

The Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Amendment Bill is currently before Parliament. It proposes restricting access to your records.

Morley also believes car ownership details are too easy to obtain in New Zealand.

"You see a pretty lady in a car and wonder who she is, so you note the registration number. You can go down to the Post Shop, pay your money and get her full name and address. Now is that right? I don't think it is."

Neither do we. This might have been OK once, but today it's dangerous and unacceptable. We believe access to vehicle registrations and to birth, death and marriage certificates must be restricted urgently.

Other sources of personal information

Your rubbish is a traditional source of information for identity thieves. Bank statements and bills are obvious sources of personal information, but Neighbourhood Support says you should be careful with any card or document carrying personal details.

Another, cleaner, source of personal information is your laptop or PDA. If yours fell into the wrong hands, what would it say about you? Storing personal or business accounts, tax numbers and correspondence on a computer is common and can provide a concentrated and portable information source for the identity thief.