By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

I heard about this on NPR this afternoon. Carnegie Mellon has developed this program, that crawls through the Internet and searches for data that might be used for ID theft. If it finds sufficient information for a person to have their ID stolen, that person is notified by email.

… the work presented herein focuses specifically on acquiring information sufficient to fraudulently acquire a new credit card using on-line resumes. An imposter needs to learn the {name, Social Security Number, address, date of birth} of a subject. Results show how resumes containing needed information can automatically be found and values harvested, and how many subjects removed such information from the Web once notified. Source: Identity Angel Project Site

We Say: As someone who’s had his ID stolen more than once, and who subscribes to a credit monitoring service rather than rely on the free report I can get annually, this sounds like a great idea. More thoughts here.