identity theft

mom60 · 07-09-2008, 02:49 PM

I thought I would start another thread on an area of identity theft that we have experienced recently.
My son has stock in a large company that he received as a gift years ago. About 4 weeks ago we get a letter addressed to my son that a tape had gone missing and my son's SSN was on the missing tape. They were offering a 2 yr enrollment for free in a credit fraud alertment plan offered by a company owned by Experian. I was leary but after calling the holding company plus the company that he owned stock in it was confirmed legit.

Then last week my spouse who is handling his parents business and personal affairs while they are traveling received a letter from his Mom's bank that due to some other mismanagement issue her SSN might have been compromised. They also offered credit fraud alertment from the same Experian company but for only 12 months.
Has anyone else had this happen to them. The strange thing is that there is no connection between the bank and the stock company. It appears Experian is making money offering their services to companies who are mismanaging our private information.

ellemenope · 07-09-2008, 03:26 PM

I've received a few letters from companies that told me of missing data. Nothing untoward ever happened. My credit card company felt that some of their data was compromised. We had to close one account and open another one--they were that worried.

Ran a free credit report check and all is OK.

It is a public relations nightmare for companies when data goes missing and customers aren't notified till much later (if at all). So many are notifying and giving customers access to free credit reports.

mapesy · 07-09-2008, 03:27 PM

^^^Yes! Last year, Wells Fargo Bank sent us a letter saying a computer containing our name, address, and Social Security number was missing from the bank and may have been stolen. They offered us a free one-year subscription to Identity Guard CreditProtect service, which supposedly monitors our Equifax file and notifies us of suspicious activities.

I did NOT sign up for the service. As a former banker, I felt this reeked of some sort of scam.

Just to be safe, I called the credit reporting agencies and placed a fraud alert on our credit files.

mom60 · 07-09-2008, 03:39 PM

I have not signed up yet they give you 60 days. We have access to our credit reports via our business so haven't decided if it is necessary. I checked my son and he has nothing at all appearing under his SSN.
It is just interesting how often our data is compromised.

BCEagle91 · 07-09-2008, 04:02 PM

I had this happen... from Boston College. They outsourced some Alumni stuff and the outsourcing company's network wasn't secure and it was compromised. Also had this happen with Fidelity Investments. I think that a laptop was stolen from a vehicle. This sort of thing is pretty common these days. If you shopped at TJ Maxx (includes Marshalls and another large clothing chain) during a certain period of time with a credit card, then your information was compromised. I think that they had their wireless hacked - they were using an older protocol which wasn't secure - or something similar.

mapesy · 07-09-2008, 04:14 PM

mom60: I may be wrong, but I can't see how these fraud alert subscription plans offer any additional protection over a regular free fraud alert. That's why I think it sounds like a scam. I suspect that after the first free year of service, the subscription will automatically renew and be charged to your credit card. Since many people never look over their monthly credit card statements, they'll never know they're being charged for the service.

Instead of signing up for the service, I recommend that you call the credit reporting agencies to have a free fraud alert placed on your credit files. An initial fraud alert is good for 90 days. Fraud alerts notify potential creditors to verify your identification before granting credit so that someone else can't use your personal information to open an account.

If you're still worried about your credit after the initial 90 days, you can file an identity theft report with your local law enforcement agency using the letter you received about the missing SS number. You would then file that valid identity theft report with the credit reporting agency for an extended fraud alert that's good for 7 years.

The three credit reporting agencies are:

Experian
TransUnion
Equifax

standrews · 07-09-2008, 04:36 PM

What irks me is that Experian and the others all have the ability provide far greater fraud detection on a routine basis than they actually do - unless of course you pay them. What they are asking you to pay for is what they should be providing for free in the first place. They are basically admitting that they intentionally do less than they could to detect fraud.

mom60 · 07-09-2008, 06:09 PM

mapesy- I thought the same thing but when I looked into it further you give them a code provided to you. You do not provide them with any credit card information.

franglish · 07-09-2008, 07:02 PM

Yes!! I got this too. We couldn't enroll on line for some reason, so we called, and it really seemed legit. I was leery of it all the same, but it we did enroll. I am concerned about giving my SSN, which I NEVER do, but then I got back in the mail my credit report and it was all correct. It came from Experion. So, I guess these things do happen. The original letter said that 4.5 million people's info was compromised. I guess a bunch of us CCers will be part of that.

Then today I came home and there was a message from my bank saying that one of my credit cards was compromised and the account had to be closed. I called back and the bank really answered and said that they couldn't tell me why the account was compromised, since no cards were missing, but the account had to be closed and we will get new cards.

This stuff is pretty scary....

BCEagle91 · 07-09-2008, 08:28 PM

This is one reason why I always get paper statement despite the banks pushing for online statements. When they give you a new card, all of the old statements are no longer available.

latetoschool · 07-09-2008, 08:31 PM

Franglish, if the compromise ending up involving some area of the Bank Secrecy Act, or a SAR filing was involved, the bank is prohibited by law from telling you why.

As to the rest of the thread topic, I think identity theft protection products are parasitically opportunistic, and that the best defense is monitoring credit reports and being careful with personal information. Mapesy's advice is solid.

my$0.02 · 07-10-2008, 03:56 AM

Quote:

There are more than eight million new victims of identity theft each year in the U.S. Many of these victims find that crooks have used stolen personal information like Social Security numbers to open new accounts in their victim’s name. A security freeze gives consumers the choice to “freeze” or lock access to their credit file against anyone trying to open up a new account or to get new credit in their name.

When a security freeze is in place at all three major credit bureaus, an identity thief cannot open a new account because the potential creditor or seller of services will not be able to check the credit file. When the consumer is applying for credit, he or she can lift the freeze temporarily using a PIN so legitimate applications for credit or services can be processed.

See State Security Freeze Laws for the exact fees and procedure.

A credit freeze is the most effective to prevent anyone from opening an account in your name. Until very recently, credit freeze was only available to victims of ID theft. For a small cost ($0-15, depending on your state of residence), you can really protect your credit.

Fraud alert sounds attractive, but in many cases has not prevented fraudulent accounts from being opened.

Quote:

Julie Fergerson, vice president for emerging technologies at Debix, the company that produced the study, said that in 40 percent of the cases she examined, it appeared that fraud alerts had failed to put all the reporting agencies on notice to prevent new credit accounts, loans and other debts from being opened in a consumer’s name without a verifying phone call from the creditor.

The implication, Ms. Fergerson said, is that “you’ve got millions of people who think that they have fraud protection in place when actually they don’t.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/business/23fraud.html

Note that two of the three credit agencies make the credit freeze process needlessly painful with mandatory snail mail processing.

latetoschool · 07-10-2008, 05:39 AM

Yes, and credit freeze can be very troubling and frustrating when you want to lift it long enough to qualify for credit to, say, rent an apartment, buy a car, home, qualify for credit, etc...I guess maybe one of the good if unintended consequences of it is that impulse credit applications are probably not possible with credit freeze...