WE all have seen the commercial where the guy offers up his own social security number to would be ID thieves. Well, they won. In a story posted on Yahoo this morning, the CEO acknowledges 87 attepts on his social security and 1 guy getting away with it. His excuse is that the company did not go through the 3 credit bereuas.
His service is $10 a month even though you can do it for free. Which is what I do! I had my class ring stolen nearly 8 years ago and it had my social security number on the inside of it. I cannot apply for credit in a store unless they call and talk to me at home first. Yes, it is very frustrating as the case three years ago in a Best Buy when I was rejected since they had to call me at home and a failed attempt to get my wife to call them and tell them in a deep voice that she was me.
I had to come back to the store the next day to buy the camera. And, yes, everyone still laughs at me trying to get my wife to talk deep into the phone a real "king of queens" moment. Which if I look like anyone famous that is who I look like.
The service does not guard against other types of identity theft such as using your Social Security number on a job app or for medical services, or even an arrestee giving police a stolen Social Security number to protect their identity. I can role out story after story about each of those examples, but the one that sticks out is the teacher being dismissed for prostitition in 5 other states beacuse of someone using her Social Security number on her arrest paperwork.
How to protect yourself:
1. You can contact the 3 credit bereaus yourself and place yourself on a credit freeze
2. SHRED - with a good cross cut shredder, once you place your garbage on the street it is public domain
3. Go over your credit card bill everymonth very carefully
4. Destroy reciepts that you do not need anymore. I had a friend that would be a garbage bag full of old papers to the camp every year to burn.
Those are just some expamples of what you can do. I am sure there are many more and we each have our own way of doing it.
Dave Woodson
Northwest Indiana's #1 Mortgage Consultant
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You know, I wondered if that Lifelock thing worked? I wrote a post about it some time ago, but never investigated much further? Is it that the credit bureaus have to call you for new credit? Maybe there should be some sort of code or something to open new accounts?
I think the punishment should be right up there with rape and murder, maybe that would make folks think twice about stealing someones identity?