Fun with Identity Theft

If you’ve never been to Zug.com, the comedy site of John Hargrave (actually, Sir John Hargrave; he had his name legally changed, he says), waste an afternoon over there. Lots of funny stuff ranging from rated G to Rated R.

I bring it up today because John has exposed identity theft protection services offered by banks in an elaborate prank.

Hargrave created a credit card account for a fictional person and signed up for the card’s for-fee identity theft monitoring service. Then he actually rigged his behavior to look suspicious in hopes that it would set off the for-fee Identity Theft monitoring service attached to the card. Included in his suspicious behavior was a reckless shopping spree and even the purchase of a quarter-ton of fertilizer at a box store.

But nothing he did set off the identity theft service. The capper of the whole experiment was a schadenfreude-filled phone call to Citi’s customer service line. Listen to the audio here as you read along.

In truth, John’s not breaking much new ground here, but he’s breaking the same old ground in such a fun way, it’s worth a read.