subject: Identity Theft Protection Is Becoming More And More Necessary [print this page] Identity theft protection is becoming more and more necessary these days. We live in what is called the information age. Paper records are being replaced by electronic ones. If you were born in the last eighty to one hundred years, chances are your address and social security number is in electronic format in a database somewhere.
Whether your information is on file at a bank, retail outlet, government agency, or personal computer, it is out there somewhere. What we need to realize is that these electronic files containing our personal information (whether encrypted or not) are always at risk of being altered, compromised, or stolen.
If thieves get access to your personal information, they can do serious damage to your credit report and seriously impact your FICO score. For example, this is what can happen:
A thief gets access to your personal information. Determines you have a favorable credit score. Opens a credit card account using your name and social security number. Reports a different address than the one where you really live on the credit application. Makes approved withdrawals and/or purchases from this new account. Has bills and invoices sent to the dummy address. Enjoys the money or merchandise. Never pays the bills. Sticks you with the debt AND the bad credit report. Leaves you to figure it out, report it, and fix it.
So what can you do? Be proactive. It is one of those situations where you have to anticipate the crime before it happens because chance are, it will. There have been reports that computers with sensitive information on them have been stolen from employees who work at banks, retail outlets, and government agencies every year (sometimes twice a year) for the last four years. These computer thefts have resulted in over 9.3million personal data files being compromised. That, to me, is an astonishing figure.
Credit report monitoring used to be the only way combat this crime. You can monitor your credit yourself by pulling your credit files from the credit bureaus every few months, or you could have a service that would electronically monitor it for you. Though it cuts the lag time between the crime and your knowledge of it, credit monitoring services are only able to detect identity theft crimes after accounts have been opened and damage has been done.
Now, there is a more technologically advanced type of service available called identity protection. The way it works is by keeping a constant electronic eye on chat rooms and directories and continuously sifting through online public records. It detects and flags signs of social security number fraud, stolen credit-card account trafficking, and other types of identity theft right away, before a crime occurs. A recent report by the Gartner Group, a Connecticut based consulting firm, predicts that identity protection services may 'overtake credit report monitoring as an effective identity theft tool by year end 2009.'
The risk of identity theft is real. It is the fastest growing crime in America. Whether you choose to get identity protection or go it alone, your best chance is to take a proactive stance.
