Household HSBC Watch

Customers of HSBC experience the highest rates of identity theft in the banking industry, according to an investigative study released Wednesday by a UC Berkeley Law School researcher. HSBC is clearly in the lead. Through an extensive Freedom of Information Act request, Chris Hoofnagle, a staff attorney at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, was able to get detailed records on the individual consumer complaints. Take a look at the chart and you clearly see HSBC has a problem.

Exact reasons for the problem are unclear but some reports indicate that HSBC Finance Corporation encouraged applications for merchant credit cards where incomplete information was deemed acceptable. Such practices may violate Homeland Security regulations and the Matrix Project. Relative to Best Buy Stores, insiders reported that HSBC agreed to accept any losses that took place if Best Buy accepted incomplete credit applications. The majority of these scams are seen during peak holiday buying periods and sale days such as Black Friday.

HSBC’s high rate of identity theft is a concern for Americans as well. Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution (FACTS) is a data management system that accesses information already available to law enforcement manually or through individualized queries via computer. FACTS performs these queries collectively, speeding the response time for receiving information. It is similar to what Internet users do when they type in a query on an Internet search engine. That engine compiles responses from numerous sources and makes them available for review. Likewise, FACTS compiles responses from numerous sources and makes them available to the investigator. FACTS puts law enforcement records and public or commercially available information in one place, where it can be accessed quickly through a common interface rather than at each source, one source at a time, using each system’s individual interface. This type of access to data helps focus investigative efforts. In short, it helps investigators function more efficiently and effectively.

Identity theft can be an effort to subvert, often resulting in criminal elements obtaining other documents such as a drivers license based upon possession of other documents. Identity theft can extend well beyond simply obtaining access to one’s checking account to take the subject’s money.