I don’t want it, you can keep it, all these Identity Theft services coming around lately, of course I don’t want to have to pay for car insurance either, but I know having it is better than being without it.
There’s a lot of talk out there now about Identity Theft Protection, and ways to be protected. Also lot of companies promising their own version of what they’ll do for you. So how do you know how real the threat is to know if you really even need their services? After all, my identity is safe, isn’t it?
You don’t see my social security number written in BIG numbers on a truck driving around town just hoping no one is not going to see it, handing out flyers with it written on them. How is anyone going to get my number to even use it, I shred all my credit card offers before I throw them in the trash.
It’s not my job to keep track of all the doctors or credit agencies who have my ssn and what they do with it when records get old and they get rid of paperwork. They dispose of it properly, cause they know how important that information is, right?
So these id theft monitoring services say they’ll call or email me when a line of credit is opened without my permission. I guess that’s like calling the farmer after the cows have gotten out of the barn. What ever happened to locking to barn doors, and checking them before you go to bed.
Then there’s this Lifelock company, they say they will Prevent it from happening, why do they need to offer a $1 million service guarantee for then, doesn’t Prevent mean Prevent? They say they’re different because a banker is supposed to check your credit report first before offering the credit, and the “fraud alert” that Lifelock puts on it is supposed to send the banker a red flag, and contact the phone number on file (which is supposed to be they guy sitting there asking for a line of credit) and if his phone doesn’t ring, hey, maybe he ain’t the guy he says he is asking for money. And the banker is supposed to put 2 and 2 together and not offer the line of credit after all. Maybe that’s what Prevention means.
So now I’m weighing between the two, Protection vs. Monitoring, barn door locked vs. a call at 2 am in the morning to tell me my cows are out on Interstate 40 blocking traffic. I guess if I have to pick, I’d pick the warm bed and suck it up and pay for the peace of mind knowing someone who knows this stuff better than me is pushing the right buttons and watching my back.
Tags: id protecting, identity theft, prevention, social security number
May 26, 2008 at 9:32 am |
Did you see the article of this Todd Davis guy on the Today show last week? Supposedly there are some people out there suing Lifelock for not protecting like they say they will. Anybody heard how that info actually got out or was it really Lifelock’s fault. I guess the banks could have slipped on this one too.
May 26, 2008 at 10:04 am |
I’ve heard he’s been hacked in the past where a bank allowed some credit without running a check on the credit report first. I haven’t heard what the suits are about, but there’s always a few that can slip by, nothings perfect.
Even if some hack’s do manage to use info they get wrongfully, I think I sleep better knowing I stand a better chance with the protection than without it. IMHO
May 28, 2008 at 2:30 pm |
My thoughts are that ID Theft cannot be “prevented”. With your SS number, Divers License, Medical Records, Credit Cards, employment records, and all the other databases that keep your information, some form of ID Theft is going to happen on some level.
The consumer needs to be educated and practice ways to protect their identity (shred documents, don’t carry SS Card, etc.). But also, they need a service that will monitor, protect, and restore their identity if it is compromised. That way the consumer has “complete security” around them.
Most ID Theft services only provide some form of ID Theft protection, and leave the consumer thinking they are completely protected when they are not.
http://idtheftnews.wordpress.com/
May 29, 2008 at 5:40 am |
Thanks Kenneth for your great input, I couldn’t agree more. There is no way to be totally protected against identity theft. There are just too many ways that we can’t keep up with that can be used against us. We can’t even control those whom we’ve trusted with our information (ex. doctors, banks…).
I know even Lifelock can’t protect 100% but at least they have a fallback plan in case someone gets around the guard to help recover us to the condition we were in before the incident, so I guess thats the best we can hope for when relying on someone else’s help.
The best we can do is like you said, don’t be carrying around personal info other than what the law requires, take a few minutes to shred personal info, and know who you’re giving your information to.
June 14, 2008 at 3:39 am |
One thing we have to be aware of is protecting our childrens identity. We’re not as concerned because we think they’re not out there in the work force yet, or not out there in the public’s eye trying to establish credit themselves, but their identity needs just as much protecting as ours.
It’s law now that our children have to have a social security number, which makes their credit history open access in the wrong hands. If your childs social security number gets stolen, you’re not going to notice it maybe for years after some crook has already damaged it. Now you’re going to be spending time away from work, money on legal fee’s trying to clean up the mess just as much as if your credit was damaged, so forgetting to protect your children makes them the “weakest link” in your protected fortress.
Just because our kids have no credit history established, that also means they have no “bad” credit history, which is what lenders are looking for thinking that person is a good credit risk. If the lender is not doing their job, and looking up the details that go along with that ssn, then they’re going to be lending the thief money in your kids name, thereby damaging your childrens credit history, leaving you holding the bag to clean up.
Frequent checking of our credit history and our childrens credit history is necessary now to keep our credit scores as high as they can be. We never know when a higher credit score is going to make the difference in getting a necessary loan.
August 10, 2008 at 9:37 am |
Yet another example of needing personal protection against identity theft in the news again. Some well known Sporting Goods stores were hacked into by “computer genius’s” stealing thousands of credit card numbers and personal identification.
At what point are authorities going to get a handle on this stuff? Not any time soon, and it’s only going to grow while copy-cat thieves think they can do better and not get caught. So what’s the alternative? If you can’t beat them, join them? No, it’s to better arm yourself with protection.
While there are many types of paid protection, there’s one that often gets overlooked, self-education. Researching for yourself ways to have a barrier around you to block attacks that are bound to come your way.
One of the sites I’ve visited, http://www.identitythefthappens.com (funny how it plays off the term we all know, s*** happens, but its about the same meaning). It’s a continual growing site that has addresses you can quickly look up to get a copy of your credit report, all the way to contacting the credit bureau’s in case of identity theft.
It looks like they answer many questions that readers have asked, many which are repeated by all of us, “How do these guys get our social security number in the first place?”. Give them a try, http://www.identitythefthappens.com and see what you can do to be prepared ahead of time.