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A huge movement to get protected against identity theft.
By karen | June 26, 2008
One of the most heavily advertised services these days is credit monitoring. You can’t turn on the radio or TV without hearing those commercials that lead you to think that all you’ve gotta do is watch your credit, and you’ll be ok. But that’s simply not true. Credit monitoring is not identity protection. Please remember that.
Jeff Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, calls credit monitoring “an unambiguous waste of money. It won’t prevent a (fraudulent) account from being opened. It’s like buying life insurance after the body is cold.”
Think about it. How do you find out if someone has acquired a Passport in your name? How do you find out if an illegal alien has a driver’s license in your name? How do you find out if someone got a job posing as you, using your social security number? Nothing like that ever shows up on a credit report. So you need whole identity protection, not the partial protection pushed in those TV and radio commercials.
Our personal information is stored on databases and computers everywhere. Credit card companies, hospitals and doctors offices, insurance companies, retail stores, accountants and tax preparers, banks, mortgage companies, county offices, schools, your home computer…and on and on. Thieves are stealing this information every day.
The Identity Theft Resource Center has been tracking documented data breaches for several years. In 2005, there were 158 data breach incidents, exposing 65 million records containing personal information such as social security numbers, drivers licenses, dates of birth, bank account numbers, maintained by companies, institutions, universities, public school districts and government agencies nationwide.
In 2006, the number of incidents doubled to 315, adding another 20 million stolen records. Last year, the number of data breaches soared to 446, with 127 million more records exposed. And by early June this year, the Identity Theft Resource Center had recorded some 300 data breaches, exposing nearly 17 million personal records.
So, in 3 1/2 years, criminals have scored over 900 data breaches, capturing well over 200 million records. Think about that. Sensitive personal information of more than two thirds of the population of the United States could now be in criminal hands from data breaches alone.
This is why experts believe that identity theft is spring-loaded to soar by a factor of twenty over the next two years, and this is why WHOLE identity protection is the only way to defend yourself.
Topics: Announcements, blog home, karen lodrick's blog |
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June 26th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
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June 26th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
[...] Professional Finance Article Site: On this site, you can find all the related finance articles. You … wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt One of the most heavily advertised services these days is credit monitoring. You can’t turn on the radio or TV without hearing those commercials that lead you to think that all you’ve gotta do is watch your credit, and you’ll be ok. But that’s simply not true. Credit monitoring is not identity protection. Please remember that. Jeff Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, calls credit monitoring “an unambiguous waste of money. It won’t prevent a (fraudulent) account from being opened. It’s li [...]