Sure, the commercials are funny. Big strapping man lifting weights has the voice of some goofy woman who stole his credit card number. Red neck drinking beer in the corner of a living room talks about a leather bra.
But it’s not funny when you are about to go out of town and a few days before your bank tells you your debit/credit card has been cancelled. Again.
The first time it happened to me was a classic example. Years ago, I got health insurance for Joella. I cancelled it after just a few months because there was so little it would cover. A few years later I get a letter from them saying an employee had sold personal information of a group of clients and mine was one of them. Whoopie. Problem was, the bank didn’t tell me. It is Friday afternoon and we have a big weekend planned. Card doesn’t work. No idea why, no way to get money until Monday. I was pissed. It was nearly a week before the bank officially notified me and another week or two before I got a replacement card then another week before I got my new PIN number.
The second time was more of a pain than anything else. I met someone on-line who lived in the UK. I decided to support this person by getting them something from their Amazon wish list. Sounds cool, eh? Problem was, my bank froze my account a few days later because it was used on Amazon.uk vs Amazon.com. They called me a day or two after freezing it and I explained and they unfroze it. Only minor problems this time.
This last time I am not sure why my card was cancelled. My bank had gotten the process right this time though. I received a letter telling me my card would no longer work after a few days. A new one was in the mail. I got the new card just two days later, a full day before the other one was to be end. I got the PIN number the next day. Much less painful than the first time!
WiredNews has an article on how to prevent or catch identity theft before it happens. While in my case no one actually used the information (to the best of my knowledge), the potential was there. It’s not that I have a crap load of money in my account (I got, like, less than a hundred right now) but they could have used my card number to quickly reach my limit in a heartbeat before my bank could stop it.
How to Foil Identity Thieves
By Ryan Singel
Data breaches and identity theft are in the headlines again following dueling stories from government agencies who together allowed outsiders to get their hands on sensitive personal information of more than 28 million government employees, reservists, soldiers and contractors.
The massive Department of Veterans Affairs breach began when a burglar broke into the house of an analyst and stole a laptop and external hard drive containing the names, birthdates and Social Security numbers of 26 million veterans and 2.2 million active-duty National Guard and Reserve troops.
At hearings following that breach, the Energy Department admitted its computers had been hacked eight months ago, and though the Social Security numbers of 1,500 employees and contractors had been compromised, almost no one, including law enforcement, the head of the department and the affected individuals, was notified.
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Still, several tools are available now to individuals that reduce their risk of identity theft, according to Hoofnagle and Tom Fragala, a volunteer with the Identity Theft Resource Center who is working on a free, do-it-yourself credit-monitoring and identity-theft recovery service.
- Opt out of pre-screened credit card offerings that come in the mail by calling 888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688). This prevents would-be identity thieves from stealing your mail and then getting credit in your name (which seems possible even if you tear the applications into pieces).
- Check your credit reports frequently. Federal law allows you to get a free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus once a year. Mark your calendar every four months and check one bureau each go-round to make sure there are no accounts in your name that you haven’t opened.
The article continues with five more ideas and tools to reduce the risk. It also has more information on what Congress and the states are (and are not) doing about this.