On a good day I can shower and get ready for work in just about an hour. On the rare occasion that I enjoy a single hour without interruption, I can research and write a rough draft for a short blog post.

In that same amount of time, two men broke into lockers at a Colorado recreation center, used a skimmer to copy account information off credit cards in the lockers, manufactured new cards using that information, and ran up $13,000 in fraudulent purchases.

Video cameras at the Wheat Ridge Recreation Center recorded one of the suspects entering the men’s locker room, while another man appears to be talking on a cell phone while he loiters in the hallway just outside the door.

An hour later, the thieves had added $7,000 to one credit card account, and $6,000 to another man’s credit card account.

Skimmers are small electronic devices that record the account information contained on the magnetic strips of credit and bankcards. Some skimmers are roughly the size of a matchbox and can be purchased for less than $200 from the Internet.

In identity theft cases where credit cards are stolen, the crimes are usually detected as soon as the victims realize their cards are missing. But, when the information from a card is copied with a skimmer, the victims continue to carry the cards themselves in their wallets, feeling blissfully secure … until the next time they attempt to use them and the cards are denied.

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If you have a bank account—and who doesn’t—your account is being targeted by identity theft malware, according to Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher at Panda Security.

“In 2007, we received more malware samples than in the previous 17 years combined,” Correll said in an interview with SCMagazineUS.com. “Our forecasts for 2008 indicated that we would end the year with some seven or eight million malware strains. However, we actually ended up with over 15 million malware specimens.”

Today’s hackers might have evolved from the nerdy boy geniuses who broke into computer systems for personal ego satisfaction, but they bear little resemblance to their ancestors. Instead, they more closely resemble the mega financial corporations they target.

“Today, there are huge illegal businesses behind this type of cybercrime, and criminal organizations are making a lot of profit from identity and data theft,” Correll said.

And just like other businesses can outsource their technology infrastructure, virus writers today can either rent the hardware, or contract with the hardware designers and owners to distribute their viruses for them.

Most of the major cybercriminal rings are in the former Eastern bloc countries, according to Correll. In fact, the criminals who hacked into then-presidential hopefuls Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaigns are thought to be from that region, as are the masterminds behind the Express Scripts data kidnapping.

The viruses are much like biological antigens that mutate and become antibiotic resistant; the software and technologies that used to work are becoming increasingly ineffective.

The only way an individual can protect themselves is to enlist the help of identity theft protection experts like those at LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about the technologies and strategies they employ to protect their nearly 1.5 million members. Enroll in their service using the LifeLock promo code Defense to receive a discount.

Identity theft can strike anyone, anywhere at anytime. And the culprit is someone known by the victim in about 26% of all cases. A prime example is a recent case from Dubuque, Iowa.

An employee at Bath and Body Works was arrested this week and admitted to committing identity theft. Shacara Hudson, 21, used a fellow employee’s personnel file to obtain all the information she needed to open a new credit card account in her coworker’s name. Before she was done, she had charged $23,795 on the account.

When you’re considering your risk for identity theft, you have to consider the people you work with as potential threats to your security. How well do you know them? How many of them have access to your personnel file? How many of them have access to your purse or laptop?

And as if the people who are part of our everyday lives aren’t enough to worry about, there are all the corporate and government data breaches that have exposed hundreds of millions of personal and financial records.

There are steps you can take to protect your identity and your finances – shred your mail, be wary of phone calls and e-mails from strangers – but for real identity theft protection, you need the comprehensive services of LifeLock. (more…)