The Current State Of Things

Well, I haven't died.  Just lost track of time, I suppose.  Got focused on other outlets for my thoughts. But now I need to dust off the blog and start communicating again on this topic.

Identity theft is much worse than when I last took keyboard in hand and made a posting here in 2012. Much worse. Just in 2014, one of the largest breaches in history occurred when Anthem Blue Cross was hacked.  Over 80 million records were stolen -- that is 1 in every 4 Americans -- with critical pieces of personal information compromised, such as Social Security Number, birthday, and medical card, to mention a few. Late last year also was the announcement that the IRS was compromised, with  tax information stolen from over 200,000 individuals. Most recently, the government's Office of Personnel Management was hacked, exposing the personal information of over 14 million people. (I'll say more about this breach an another blog post.)

The severity of the breaches is staggering.  Gone are the days of having your credit card and bank account stolen.  OK, those are still happening, but they dwarf in comparison to the extent of today's breaches.  Now, these thieves are stealing enough personal information to duplicate full identities and manufacture synthetic identities (made by combining pieces of data from several people).  Given the scope of each breach, there is essentially an unlimited combination of synthetic identities that can be created.  There may be multiple whole versions of you and me, or thousands of folks with our "arms" and "legs" and "noses" living lives, buying houses, getting jobs, or committing crimes.

What can be done? In presentations I've made on the subject, I've said control what you can, and get help with what you can't.  By that I mean be diligent in shredding documents, using the computer carefully, being aware of scams, and so forth.  But understand that most of your critical and valuable personal information is not only in the hands of other businesses, it is very likely already in the hands of criminals through these breaches I've mentioned.  Your identity is being sought or has been compromised by professional thieves, and it takes professionals to monitor it and restore it.

There are many companies that offer identity theft protection, and all are better than having nothing.  But understand what you are paying for.  Some are better than others.  In 2012, the market leader LifeLock was fined by the FTC for over-promising yet under-delivering, and fined again this year for not fixing the problems.

I've been representing LegalShield since 2007, and they offer identity theft protection and restoration.  Their current product set called IDShield is the the absolute best in the industry, for coverage, value, and restoration.  LegalShield was examined in 2012 by the FTC like LifeLock, and given a clean bill of health.

If you don't have coverage, check out my site www.idsolutions.us; you can look at the IDShield product and purchase it there.  If you have coverage with some other company, take a look at this offering.  Got any questions? Contact me at dbooth@nscky.com.
#IDSolutions #IDTheft

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equifax Provides More Details of Hacked Data

In a recent letter to several congressional committees, Equifax shared that out of the 146+ million records that were hacked in last year's breach: all contained consumers' dates of birth,  nearly all contained Social Security Numbers,  99 million had address information,  209,000 contained credit card data including expiration dates,  38,000 contained driver's license info, 3,200 contained passport information. While some identity fraud incidents have been traced back to the Equifax breach, most of these records have not yet been used in a fraud.  However, since the data is not likely to change (other than credit card info), it is assumed that eventually the stolen information will be sold in the dark web and misused.  Just a matter of time.  My advice: do what you can to minimize your exposure and certainly stay on top of your credit reports, but since things like passports, driver's licenses, and Social Security Numbers can be used in non-financial identity
Read more

Orbitz Reveals Breach Of 880,000

Orbitz, a division of Expedia, has announced it was hacked last October, 2017, revealing credit card information of 880,000 customers, including names, birth dates, mailing and email addresses, dated between January and June, 2016. The current Orbitz website was not hacked, according to the company. One article on the breach: http://www.zdnet.com/article/orbitz-says-hacker-stole-customer-data/
Read more

Should I Be Concerned About Criminal Identity Theft?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've found that most people equate ID theft only with their finances -- their bank and credit accounts.  They don't see a need for paid protection services, relying instead on bank- or card- or insurance-provided free services.  Or they put fraud alerts on their credit report every three months. While useful, these free services rarely look beyond the finances or offer much in the way of restoration.  I advise people to get all of the reliable free coverage they can, but recognize their limitations, and understand that real identity theft is much more than their finances. Take for example something called criminal identity theft.  This is where someone pretends to be someone else, hiding their own identity, when caught in the act of a crime, such as illicit drug dealing or breaking and entering.  Often this is pulled off by first obtaining driver's license info either through direct theft or through a breach and then modifying it with
Read more