AMISH COUNTRY - Rookie Fraud Victimologist Taylor Henson thought that a two-week stint in Amish country would clear up some research she was doing on identity theft victimization. In the time spent with the Amish, she carefully observed and interviewed those within the community. In the end, she left perplexed at how the groups steered clear of compromised personal identifiable information (PII).
“It was a really good experience,” she explains. “I got to ride in a car that was powered by a horse! The food was really good too and the people were nice. I also had to take a lot of notes by hand. For some reason, I couldn’t find an outlet to plug my computer into, so the battery went dead.
“I found that information exposures or data breaches just don’t happen in the Amish community. There were no instances of things like their social security numbers, phone numbers, or email addresses being used fraudulently. Come to think of it, some of the people I talked to didn’t even seem to have these things. Almost like there wasn’t enough PII to lead to a theft... go figure.” Taylor intends to compile her research and return when she develops a theory as to why the Amish remain unaffected by the crime.
“We’re a simple folk really,” states Hans Yoder, an Amish resident of the community that Henson visited. “We don’t have time for these new-fangled crimes…to be honest, we don’t have time for the old crimes either.”
During Henson’s next trip to the Amish community, she hopes to better understand how the Amish way of life wards off identity fraud. In addition, she is also optimistic that she can learn how to perfect an authentic strawberry rhubarb Amish fry pie.