According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) today, there has been 519 data breaches -- a record number -- reported thus far in 2015. Businesses and the healthcare industry account for nearly 75% of the reported breaches, with banking accounting for another 9%, and education and government breaches accounting for the balance of 16%. Of course, these are just the reported breaches. Some entities choose not to report them, or they haven't been discovered yet. Historically, many months go by before breaches are discovered. Without trying to sound like a salesman, it is no longer a valid option to ignore identity theft, hoping it won't happen. All of us have had our information compromised. It is just a matter of whether our information will be used in a fraud. If you do not have a strong identity theft protection service, get one. I recommend IDShield from LegalShield. Take a look at it at my website http://IDSol...
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Is Credit Card Fraud The Same As Identity Theft?
As an identity theft risk management specialist, I speak to various groups about identity theft awareness and prevention. My biggest challenge is to get people to realize that true identity theft is much more than financial theft. Always at some point in the Q&A time of the presentation, someone will mention that they have had their credit card stolen or that they have had bogus charges show up on their credit card statement. Does that mean, they ask, that their identity has been stolen? The accurate but not-very-helpful answer is "not necessarily". Credit card fraud by itself is not defined as identity theft by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It can be an indicator of identity theft, but more often than not, it is just a case where a criminal has obtained a credit card number through a data breach or pickpocketed the card, either physically or by using RFID technology. That may be as far as the theft goes. Sometimes the issuing credit card compan...
Data Breaches Down 14% From Last Year's Record Number
The latest word from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) is that the reported data breach number is about 14% lower so far this year than last year's record number of breaches. As of February 16, that there have been 124 data breaches reported, with nearly 3 million records exposed since the beginning of the year. This is certainly good and welcome news, but "the barn door has already been left open." Our personal information has been exposed multiple times over in recent years, most notably in the Equifax breach last year. Still, I'll take the good news; better than 14% higher. Looking at the ITRC numbers just reported, the business sector continues to lead the breach count with 40% of the breaches (and 74% of the records exposed), but medical breaches have risen to nearly 1/3 of the breaches. I'm very worried about the medical numbers, because so much critical data, including medical insurance data and medical conditions are stolen. This inform...
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