Identity Theft Awareness

Did you know that you can get a free credit report every 12 months from each of the credit bureaus? (Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union.)  You can request the report by going to annualcreditreport.com.  Just be careful, because the bureaus will try to steer you into monthly monitoring or other costly services you may or may not want to have. I'd recommend that you stagger these reports every four months so that in a year you have one from every bureau (ex: get Equifax in Jan, Experian in April or May, Trans Union in Aug or Sept). Why is this important, you might ask?  Things happen to our credit in the course of a year that might not be accurate, or may indicated a potential identity theft in progress.  Even if you have monitoring enabled, a monitor may not be able to pick out what is legitimate and what is bogus.  And it is possible, even likely, that things reported to Experian may not show up on Trans Union's report, depending upon the reporting agency...

Tracy Kitten of www.bankinfosecurity.com writes 1/11/12 about a teenager working at McDonald's used a card skimmer to commit identity theft.  Link to article HERE . ========================== A 17-year-old was slapped with a 60-day jail sentence after he was busted for skimming credit and debit details while working the drive-thru window at a McDonald's restaurant in Olympia, Wash. This insider scam highlights a card fraud trend the industry needs to watch, experts say Card-skimming expert and fraud consultant Jerry Silva says the case highlights just how easy it is for insiders to perpetrate card fraud, especially in a retail environment. "It truly is remarkable," Silva says. "Even if we protect the ATMs and POS devices, insider fraud like this will take place due to the ease with which criminals can get their hands on the appropriate devices. This is an industry that clearly needs an elegant and innovative solution (not EMV) that can at least make it a...

Here is a pretty good article by Brian O'Connell of thestreet.com, written 1/10/2012.  Article link HERE . =========================== Identity fraud thieves are increasingly targeting smartphones as a gateway to grabbing consumers' private financial data.  If you don't act to safeguard your smartphone from I.D. thieves, you could be taking a big risk, but some preparation and a little bit of help from financial services companies are good places to start protecting yourself. With smartphone use growing by 40% last year from 2010, the potential for increased identity theft activity will rise too. To guard personal data on your smartphone: Make sure your bank's firewall is strong. Don't sign up for mobile banking unless you have assurance from your financial institution that it can protect you against viruses and security breaches. Consider the Zeus virus, which recently haunted Android phone users: Hackers were able to use the virus to access Droid users...

Perhaps you've received a credit report from one or all of the credit bureaus.  It can be somewhat intimidating to look at it!  How do you tell if there is something you need to check out?  The information at THIS article by Kroll Fraud Solutions (who services the LegalShield Identity Theft product) may give you some good tips.

As I have spoken to folks about identity theft, I've discovered there is a lot of confusion about what exactly is identity theft.  So in this blog posting, rather than referencing numerous web articles, I want to introduce you to the various types of identity theft.  In the next series of posts, I will discuss each type in more detail, to give you a better perspective on this tsunami called "identity theft" and what you can do to protect yourself.  Financial ID Theft       Ask most people to define identity theft, and they will answer "credit card theft" or believe it has something to do with their financial identity.  And certainly financial identity theft is a major and growing type of identity theft.  Thieves find it less risky and more lucrative than other crimes; it has now surpassed drug trafficking as a crime of choice.  But it is only one type of ID theft, and it is perhaps the easiest to detect and correct of all the types.  There are laws, for example,...