A BALLAN woman says an incorrectly issued driver’s licence could have easily made her the victim of identity theft.
Gail Fiandar was sent the licence from VicRoads on May 28 yet she had renewed her own licence last year.
The licence she received in the mail came complete with her name, date of birth and address, but with another woman’s photograph and signature.
When she called VicRoads to advise of the error, Ms Fiandar said she was referred to a manager at a call centre who was “rude and abrupt”.
Ms Fiandar, who is disabled and uses an electric scooter, said she was told it was her responsibility to return the faulty ID to the Ballarat VicRoads office in person, which she said would take her an entire day.
She said she was “extremely frightened” that the ID could have easily been sent to the other woman, which could allow her identity to
be stolen.
“Often 100 points are required to get [ID and credit cards], and a licence is worth 40 points,” Ms Fiandar said. “You could easily
get a fake membership card for 25 points and a fake rates bill at 35 and then you would have the 100.”
After appealing to Corrections Minister Andrew McIntosh, Ms Fiandar was eventually told by VicRoads she could destroy the licence herself.
VicRoads’s acting customer services director, Serge Zandegu, said human error was the cause of the mistakenly issued licence.
“VicRoads is introducing barcode scanning facilities into its camera technology, to eliminate the possibility of this type of human error in the future,” he said.
“The following call to a VicRoads call centre has been reviewed and while VicRoads has determined that its contact centre officers were at no time rude to Ms Fiandar, they failed to make a connection with her situation or show empathy regarding her concerns, despite agreeing with her that it was a mistake.”
Bacchus Marsh police’s Senior Constable James Ross said he typically witnessed a couple of identity theft scams a year and urged residents to be vigilant with their online security.
“The biggest problem we have with hacking and identity theft is through social networks like Facebook,” he said.
“We’ve dealt with quite a lot of banking scams which are usually email-instigated. It’s usually impossible to follow those through as the offender could be sitting in Egypt.”
Senior Constable Ross said many people were reluctant to report such crimes because they felt foolish or “duped”. He said it was “absolutely atrocious” that VicRoads had made the privacy error. “If that had gone to someone else they could easily steal credit cards, rate bills, and then max out a credit card.”
In July last year, a survey conducted by Di Marzio Research revealed nearly one in six Australians had been a victim or known someone who had been a victim of identity theft.
An independent online survey of 1200 people also revealed nine in 10 people were concerned or very concerned about identity theft and misuse. The survey also revealed the majority of identity theft or misuse occurred over the internet (58per cent) or through the loss of a credit or debit card (30per cent).
