Protecting Children Against Identity Theft

Kudos to the state of Maryland for leading the way in protecting children and their credit.

In 2012, the governor of Maryland signed into law The Maryland Child Identity Lock bill that gives parents and guardians the opportunity to create and proactively freeze their minor children or dependents credit.

Contrary to belief, a credit report is not created upon birth or the issue of a social security number, rather it is created upon establishing credit. Criminals are stealing the identities of children who are not discovering the fraudulent activity until much later in life.

Other states (16 to date) have followed Maryland’s lead. Florida recently adopted a similar law, the Keeping I.D. Safe (KIDS) Act.

Illustrating the significance of this crime against children, Ashtavia Maddox spoke in support of the Keeping I.D. Safe (KIDS) Act. As a young girl in the foster care system Ashtavia's identity was stolen and not protected while living in the state of Florida. She faced many challenges in trying to clear her name.  

But, these crimes are not isolated to 16 states. These crimes occur against children across all states.

As a victim of identity theft in the state of Ohio, this is legislation that I urge be swiftly adopted by Ohio and by all states. Parents and guardians should have resources available to them in order to protect their children’s credit.

The Federal Trade Commission recently released their list of consumer complaints, and topping the list for the 15th year is identity theft. Heading toward two decades of this crime dominating consumers’ lives, children too deserve to be safeguarded from this crime and parents and guardians should have the right to protect and preserve their child’s future.

Fifteen Years

It appears as though identity theft is the Meryl Streep among the contenders for consumer complaints recorded by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC released its top consumer complaints for 2014, and for the 15th consecutive year identity theft tops the list.

This is worrisome considering the issue only seems to be getting more widespread, with an exponential amount of people becoming victims.

Are we waiting for identity theft to be the top complaint for two decades before we move into serious action to derail this crime?

Let’s hope more is done to prevent identity theft so the subsequent “consumer complaints” in this area are not topping the list in 2015 and beyond.

…makes one wonder the purpose of filing a consumer complaint if after all of this time the issue does not seem to be receding from the top spot.

10 Things I Have Learned as a Victim of Identity Theft

You can do everything right and still become a victim of identity theft. There are untrustworthy people who have access to your information, and in this day and age of technology, it is an easy crime to commit, with damaging consequences only to the victims.

There is never a break. You cannot take a break when you discover that you are a victim of identity theft. You have no choice but to be constantly on the ball, either making calls or sending correspondence to clear your name. It is a snowball that you have to be way out in front of in order to minimize the damage.

Erroneous information will override your actual information on your credit report. You may think that your credit report reflects you and that changing any of the information on there would be a difficult task-nope, it’s actually very easy to override your information with that of a criminal. The criminal who used my information used it in conjunction with her actual identifying information. So her previous places of employment, showed up in my employment history…places she lived, showed up as places I lived…phone numbers, were listed as my contact information…you get the picture. 

Live in a community where the police department includes a detective bureau or a detective. If I didn’t happen to live in a community with a detective bureau who had dedicated officers looking into my case, I do not believe the criminal in my case would have been apprehended and eventually sentenced for the crime. If I ever move, a community must have a detective bureau. 

The importance of taking detailed notes and mailing everything certified. Criminals typically don’t try your identity out with one or two entities; they will use it repeatedly in an attempt to access goods and services, whatever is there for the taking. In my case, the criminal even took out a subscription with the local newspaper-nothing is off limits. You are going to be calling the credit bureaus (multiple times), and each and every company the thief came in contact while using your information (multiple times). The entities will turn to you to provide information proving your identity. It is a back and forth process, a timed one at that, and since you don’t uniformly discover all of the fraudulent activity, it is usually staggered so it is of the utmost importance to keep detailed information in order to keep some semblance of order when clearing your name, and ensuring you meet the deadlines of submitting required documentation.

File a police report. I had to supply a copy of my police report for each and every instance of identity theft. The other document that was almost always required was a FTC (Federal Trade Commission) affidavit. This document goes into a little more detail about the circumstances surrounding the identity theft. Don’t be surprised if you supply these documents, and you are provided a company’s affidavit to fill out as well.

You may seek the guidance or resources of a government entity and you will quickly discover that nobody knows where to direct you. You will be tossed around from agency to agency. One agency tells you to go here, another tells you to go there. None of the agencies know what the other is doing, and none of them have been any remote of help to me, except the detective bureau in the local police department. 

Freeze your credit immediately upon discovering that you are a victim. Originally, I hesitated to do this, even though a criminal had destroyed my reports, for some reason I felt as if a freeze would tarnish it as well, so I placed a fraud alert. I did eventually freeze my report; this does seem like the only true way these days to prevent thieves from infiltrating your report…however, I have learned that fraudulent inquiries will continue to show up.

Credit reports are not established at a certain age, rather they are established when credit is created. This is how children are discovering fraudulent accounts on their credit report later in life. Companies that have weak or non-existent due diligence procedures are extending credit to criminals on children’s nonexistent credit.  I strongly support all children having their credit frozen until the time when they need to access it-this option is not available in all states, and should be. Until this is an established practice, check your children’s credit to ensure they are not victims.

Be prepared to be treated like you are trying to get out of something. As a victim of identity theft you are immediately thrusted in the position of having to defend yourself, having to prove you are who you say you are. I recall a collection company that I spoke with after receiving a notice that a fraudulent account was in default. Knowing the drill, I explained to the collection company that I was a victim of identity theft and asked what documentation I needed to submit, and they responded by aggressively questioning if I was really was a victim. I cannot convey how maddening that moment is. Companies treat you like you are trying to get out of something. It was like this with nearly each and every entity. These are huge national companies, companies you very well may do business with. They lack the sophistication (or don’t put safeguards in place) to prevent identity theft, excuse themselves from the issue by claiming themselves also as victims, then turn to you and treat you like you have the time to invest in creating a scheme in order to get out of paying for a good or service. It is an amazing juxtaposition to be going through a crime as a victim, and having to defend, explain, and document how you are not a thief. All the while you are at the mercy of these companies, the exact same entities who allowed this to occur to you in the first place.

Not If, But When

It's simply not a matter of if you will experience identity theft, it's when.

Constantly, we hear of or experience occurences of stolen personal information resulting in identity fraud, credit card fraud, tax fraud, medical fraud, the list goes on. If it has not already affected your life, it will. And be ready for a rude awakening when you find yourself a victim. The burden is on you. Think you'll just need to make a phone call or two, think again. In some cases, just set aside a few years of your life and you may have some of the time, energy, and effort covered that you will find is necessary to try and restore your name.

The burden is not with the criminal and not with the entities who allow the theft to occur, it rests solely on you.

I do not under any circumstance have any amount of sympathy when an entity declares that they have been hacked.

The news is always followed-up with that they are doing "all they can do". What does that mean? What this really means is that they didn't think it would happen to them, or they didn't want to spend the money to put safeguards in place to protect you, and now they are doing "all they can do". 

In the latest hacking case health insurer Anthem says hackers infiltrated their computer network and the hackers were successful in accessing personal information, including social security numbers. 

Anthem has now hired an internet company to improve its defenses.

Isn't it a little late for that?

Here you are a health insurer who not only holds personal information, but also included in that access to some or all of your customer's medical history.

This is inexcusable. The mindset that they too are victims is wrong. They clearly were not doing all they could do, because now after the fact they have reached out to "improve their defenses" and "identify potential gaps".

Anthem, as well as other entities, is gambling that this will not happen and it does, daily. And, even if they thought this might occur, what is the worst that could happen? They would not be stuck cleaning-up the mess-no, that is left to you, and they would come out looking like victims of the crime, when clearly they are not.

Anthem is no stranger to this, in 2013 the company agreed to pay $1.7 million to resolve federal allegations of security weaknesses. And even with this most recent occurrence admitted the stolen information was not encrypted in their database. 

As for praising them for their rapid response to the hack, we need to start praising companies for their pro-active response instead of praising entities that operate bad business at our expense.

Understanding Your Credit Score

Whether you have been the victim of identity theft or not, you may want to know what your credit score is in addition to viewing your credit reports.

The most widely used credit scores are FICO Scores, the credit score created by Fair Isaac Corporation. Lenders use FICO Scores to help them make billions of credit decisions every year. Fair Isaac calculates FICO Scores based solely on information in consumer credit reports maintained at the credit reporting agencies.

FICO Scores range from 300 to 850. FICO Scores are calculated by a mathematical equation that evaluates many types of information from your credit report, at that agency. By comparing this information to the patterns in hundreds of thousands of past credit reports, FICO Scores estimate your level of future credit risk.

You have FICO Scores for each of the three credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. Each FICO Score is based on information the credit bureau keeps on file about you. (myFICO.com)

Nowadays, there are a slew of places you can obtain your credit score. Some opt to receive their score for an additional fee when requesting credit reports from the three main credit bureaus. More recently there are companies that will provide you access to a free credit score, or will provide it to you if you have an account, but be sure to know which credit bureau they are pulling the information. More than likely, they may only be tabulating the score based on one credit bureau, and with the credit bureaus reporting different information; the score can differentiate from one bureau to another.

The Criminal Image

What is the image that pops in your head of the type of person who would steal your identity?

According to the numerous resource publications I have perused as well as the many articles I have read on the subject of identity theft, if there is a stock photo of a criminal used, sure enough they are all a similar image of the same man with a black mask appearing to be lingering around the corner waiting to creep in and steal your personal data right from under your nose!

Go ahead, I’ll wait as you Google search identity theft (in images), and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Yep, so it’s that guy or Melissa McCarthy.

If we are on the lookout for the person fitting that one-dimension description, than I guess we are good.

And, I guess the “identity theft criminal image man” had a vacation day when my identity was stolen. The criminal in my case doesn’t look a thing like that.

No, the criminal who stole my identity was a female, late 30’s, blonde, and maskless.

So be on the look out for that description too.

Technology and its Lead Role in Identity Theft

It seems that when companies and the like roll out the latest technology in the spirit of “making our lives easier” (or as I cynically view it, devising a much easier way for the benjamin’s to flow from your fingertips to theirs) we are all early adopters. There is a tangible universal core belief that when something “high-tech” is introduced to consumers then it must be better for us. That ideology is ironic when you consider that we sometimes label items as “high-tech” because we lack full understanding of how the technology operates, yet we are all so willing to embrace it.

Technology can be a truly miraculous thing. Technology advances in medicine saves lives. Nothing is more substantive than that. And the technology meant to do that-when life and death are at stake-probably do go through much more rigorous testing than those technologies meant for financial transactions and the like. But, shouldn’t we understand how all technology works before it is placed out for public use and consumption?

We as 21st century consumers expect the latest and greatest technology to flow into our lives at rapid speed. We almost enjoy our technology for a minute-then we catch a glimpse of what is coming out that is supposedly better. We’ve grown accustomed to being served in this way. The comedian Louis CK comes to mind when he talks about people flying on planes and all of the complaining that goes along with it these days.

Even in the movies, which are intrinsically technical, there tends to be a friendly nature that is generally portrayed of machines.  Short Circuit, or more recently the Disney movie “Wall-E”, come to mind. Technology is humanlike and our friend-so they tell us. Maybe that’s why we trust it.

Yet, it seems that technology is so rapidly infiltrating our livelihood, it is so accepted by us (or has no choice to be)-but the technology itself, is so fleeting. There is always something better around the corner.

At this pace, one thing is clear. The technology that is being utilized by companies, organizations, and the like is not tested before placed out to market. We basically invite crime with our advertised blatant lack of understanding of the technology that is put forth. These entities need to make the investment in order to protect its users. And, consumers need to demand these terms. We allow all of our personal information to be mishandled and at worst stolen, time and time again, and we will still come back and will buy from you, obtain services from you-we’ll even thank you and give you a smile. We have sheepishly accepted these haphazard and completely unacceptable terms to be status quo, maybe because we believe that is the price we are paying to afford this type of modern convenience during our lifetime.

The price of identity theft is not worth any luxury.

Identity Theft 101

There is something that you can do right now-that you should do right now-and that is to check your credit report.

You don't have to wait until you are a victim of identity theft to dig deep into your credit history. (Unless you like feeling like your living in a real life Law & Order episode where a bad guy steals your identity…it's not a day at the beach folks).

And, checking your credit report takes just a few minutes.

Besides being proactive to ensure your credit report is accurate (meaning correct name, address, employers, accounts, etc.), you want to make sure you have not become the victim of identity theft. 

Federal law allows you to get a free copy of your credit report every 12 months from each credit reporting company.  

The three major credit reporting companies are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

A good rule of thumb is to check your report around your birthday. You might also decide to check one of the reports every four months. Keep in mind each report looks different, and reports items differently.

You can visit www.annualcreditreport.com to access all three reports-this is the only authorized website for free credit reports (per the Federal Trade Commission).

If you discover inaccurate information, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), both the credit reporting company and the information provider (that is, the person, company, or organization that provides information about you to a consumer reporting company) are responsible for correcting inaccurate or incomplete information in your report. 

This is something I can't stress enough-you must contact BOTH the credit reporting companies as well as the company providing inaccurate information. Both entities must correct the information.

Rather than waiting to see if you become an identity theft victim, check your credit reports, and make sure that what is being reported in your name is accurate. 

Reference: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-reports

A Modern Day Gold Rush: Catering to Criminals

There are various forms of identity theft.

While all equally wrong to its victims-and all equally wrong by those who commit this crime-the impact levels vary.

Although in all forms, the bottom line is that your identity is compromised.

When I initially discovered that I was a victim of identity theft, my mind went right to thinking someone stole my credit card number and made a fraudulent purchase. 

I also thought identity theft was a term that was used to describe those could not be more obvious fraudulent e-mails requesting you transfer “$1 million dollars” into a bank account to help someone in a country you've never heard of-WHO would fall for this I would think?! And looking back, this is not even identity theft-this is a pure scam.

Honestly, I didn't think identity theft would ever be part of my vernacular. I am a very careful person. I scrutinize everything, which makes this crime even more difficult because it is not as though I can change my behavior going forward.

I thought, and it sounds cliché, that this does not pertain to me. First, because I am aware, and would not “fall” for being a victim of identity theft, and if someone did use my credit card, well, I could just straighten the identity theft out with my bank, and that some cumbersome paperwork might be the worst of what would be endured.

But, unfortunately, that is not all that lies in the spectrum of identity theft. Mine was much worse. Much worse in the aspect that it involved someone perpetrating that they were me and signed-up for any good or service under the sun. Using my name and accessing my credit. And, having ZERO regard for the financial mess alone that this would cause, and leaving me the painstaking mess to fix.

Now, you might think to yourself, well this girl had "the much worse version", so this won't happen to me to this degree.

No, that's the point of this blog and this website. This can happen to anyone and to any degree-identity theft is the number one reported "complaint" to the Federal Trade Commission.

When you hear of all of these recent data breaches in the news your mind may go to the “hope I don’t have to straighten this out with the credit card company identity theft”, but the much more damaging component is your personal information-including your social security number being accessed-which is exactly what can occur.

All it takes is a name (it doesn’t even have to be yours), an address (you don’t have to be living there), and your social security number-now, that is the ONE thing the criminal must get right-the social security number. This is the access point. And, in some data breaches, this information is compromised.

Once identity theft is committed to you in an area of the spectrum, you are susceptible for it occurring in any area. You must be proactive and respond as if it will or has happened.

Let’s face it, criminals are unlikely to feel compassion for you in one area, but not another-whatever financial or medical gain-they will take it. And, those nine digits are all that it takes-all.

Hoping identity theft doesn't strike you should not be the status quo.

We keep hearing about this crime…the reoccurring data breaches, the fraudulent filed tax forms…it seems daily there is another form that identity theft takes. Another area you need to monitor.

Yet, I don't hear much being asked what is being done to prevent this crime.

We are good on the dead-end resources front too.

And, I mean dead-end in every sense of the word.

No. I don’t want you to help me clean up the identity theft mess-what I’d like is for this crime not to occur-which companies do have some control. A lot more control then what is being exercised today.

Companies need to protect our personal information-on both fronts.

Look at who has your personal information, what are they doing to protect it?

They need to treat it as if it is going to be hacked and put safeguards in place to prevent this crime today, not when it happens.

And, what due diligence is being conducted before companies extend credit?

If companies are going to request a social security number, actually check whose credit it is linked to-does five-year old Billy want a mortgage?

Probably not.

On hold.

Once you discover that you are the victim of identity theft be prepared to make calls and write letters like it is your new full-time job. And it's going to feel like a never-ending homework assignment from hell.

Notice I didn’t say you’d be crafting e-mails.

The phone calls typically won’t prove your innocence to anyones liking either, but it gets the ball rolling-where you get to learn of all the documents and reports they request in order for you to establish that you are indeed a victim.

And so, the back and forth begins. Them checking your work and grading you on what you produce. Such scrutiny...at this level.

And when you call, be prepared to wait. And wait. And wait. Meanwhile, your credit sits exposed and in a mess, and when time is of the essence and you have so little of it while trying to navigate the system, you wait. It would be nothing for me to be on hold for 45 minutes to an hour –or more-for someone to “help” me. Here you are clamoring to get these companies immediate attention-“HEY! I’m a victim of identity theft-over here-over here, (arms waving)-what do I need to do to remedy this NOW?!”, and their response to you…………………..…..a long wait (sigh) like watching molasses drip. drip. drip. Adding insult to injury.

Nothing is immediate with remedying identity theft. This is ironic considering how quickly a thief can claim your identity as their own and immediately reap the benefits.

Although the thieves have the option of creating fraudulent accounts electronically, I have yet to encounter a company who was satisfied with my information through e-mail-not that having this option would make any of this any easier or make me feel any more secure. Nope back to snail mail for you-make that certified snail mail. Not that traditional mail doesn’t have its faults, it does, but it’s as if THEY KNOW the electronic system, well, let’s just say isn’t their preference on this side of the issue.