Scary Facts On The Rise Of Identity Theft

1. Thieves are 1 step ahead.

Id Thieves are getting smarter, and the are more technologically save than ever before.  Whats even more scary is that the risk is worth the reward for these guys and girls. Fewer than 1 out of every 700 identity theft crimes leads to an arrest. The technology and tactics these guys use changes so fast that it is very hard for police to stay up to date with the latest techniques. Credit monitoring is your best line of defense against these crimes.

2. Cases of ID theft are increasing daily.

A scary new partnership is arising in the world of ID thieves. Hackers are now breaching large databases to steal the private information and then turning around and selling this to ID thieves. This is a scary trend as it now makes data that used to be only a select group of hackers could have access to is now transferring hands in to would be thieves.  These hackers are constantly setting larger and larger targets for themselves, and in turn much more of our personal data could be sold to hundreds or thousands of would be identity thieves.  This is very scary to us in the credit monitoring world as before you only had elite groups who used to hack into these systems, and generally the hackers were more after the company and not your information. Now that they are selling the data it opens the door to lower tier thieves who will try anything to make a dollar.

3. New Account Fraud is at an all time high.

With the data now being so easy account fraud is increasing at  an exponential rate.  Account fraud is when you have someone take your good credit and open up accounts in your name. Most of these types of fraud occur to consumers who have high credit scores. This is so that a thief can get instant approval and start using the account instantly. Our credit monitoring is the best way to fight off this type of fraud. You would be notified within 24 hours if anyone has created an account using your personal information, and then you would be able to stop the thieves before they were able to do any damage to your reports or scores.

4. It takes a long time to clean up.

Victims of ID theft on average will spend 40-50 hours trying to clean up a single case of ID theft. And on average they will spend $500-$1000 dollars out of pocket to fight these crimes. And the longer it takes to detect the theft the longer it will take to restore your credit, and make you edible to get credit at your pre-theft rates.  To be honest, its a pain in the ass, and we should not have to go through it, unfortunately the likely hood that you or someone you know will have to go through this is very great. If you are a member of our service we have a team ready to help you out and make it as painless as possible. 

More tips to prevent ID theft coming soon!

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Protecting The Eldery With Credit Monitoring

The elderly and children, they should be victimless and carefree.  That just is not the case, there are so many people who choose to pick on these demographics and its just sick and wrong.  According to the FTC ID theft among the elderly account for over 10% off all ID thefts.  It is very important to all of us who have elderly parents, or care for the elderly to help to monitor there credit.  This is especially important if they live alone.

This is a silent epidemic as many are to proud to come forward and admit they are the victims of a crime.  Knowing this and knowing that the elderly control over 70% of the nations household wealth make them an idle victim to prey on.

Elderly are especially vulnerable to new high tech theft such as phishing, or other methods of ID theft.  Elderly people in general seem to be more trusting than us young whipper snappers. Through a little technology in and you have a recipe that is ripe to exploit for thieves.  An example I recently helped out with was a elderly woman received a text message from her “bank” I put bank in quotes because it literally said your bank. The message was something in regard to you missed your last payment you need to call us immediately or we will foreclose on your home. They seem to always have a since of urgency and over the top dire consequences if you do not respond to them quickly.

When she called the number they then in a very rapid fire way asked her to verify account information, checking numbers, and routing numbers. They had the balls to say they think that someone many be using her account and needed that information so they could track it down and verify all things that went out.  Luckily for this innocent woman a family happened to be visiting and overheard the conversation and immediately called her actually bank and had them protect her account and then filled a police report. These types of scams happen all the time. We need to protect our elders.

So what can we do? Well the most important thing we can do is to make sure we check in as often as we can, and do not be afraid to pry a bit into personal questions. Questions such as, “Has you bank called you?” Or “Any phone calls this week?” You can also look on their caller ID and ask about any suspicious numbers you do not recognize. Elderly people are extremely sharp and proud, and like I said before many will not want to admit to the fact they may have been scammed. You need to push a bit.

You could put a freeze on their credit reports. This will protect them from anyone trying to open an account with there information. And if they did need to get credit, it is very simple to remove it.

If you can get them to allow you, you should get in the habit of looking over their bank, and credit card statements. Keep a look out for any suspicious transactions. Many times these will be small amounts and easy to overlook, that is part of the scam, just keep leeching small amounts that most likely will be over looked.

If you can it is also very important to have them sign up for our credit monitoring services you can then have the alerts sent to you so you will know if there are any issues you need to look at.

Credit monitoring will not protect them from scams that go straight for their bank accounts, but it will protect them from becoming a victim of ID theft.

 

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Can Credit monitoring Protect From Phishing?

In our last post we mentioned phishing and with that came some questions asking if our credit monitoring can protect you from phishing. The short answer is no it can not. What it can do is help you to know if you have become a victim of phishing if they have stolen your id, or opened accounts with your information.

Let me explain what phishing is and then how you can use some simple tips to prevent it from happening to you! Phishing refers to the fraudulent act of sending emails that look like they are coming from a legitimate source, they do this in order to gain personal information such as your bank accounts, routing numbers, credit card numbers, or any other person information. This is not just limited to email, although email is the most common, it can happen over the phone or through text messages.

Phishing is becoming more and more common, and the phishers are getting much better at their craft, here are some tips to help you stay safe.

• Don’t trust strangers. Mom and Dad were correct, its best not to trust people we dont know. If you get an email or phone call that is asking for any kind of information do not open it or click on the links inside the email. Most of the time the phishers will try to spur a impulse reaction with headlines like “You account has been hacked, click here to restore your password”. They will always try for a sense of urgency. If you do get an email like this, pick up the phone and call the number on your bank statements or the back of your credit cards.
• Never click on links in your email. If you get an email from your bank or any other financial institution take the few seconds to type in the URL instead of clicking on the link in the email. If it is a phishing email these will take you to a website that looks perfect, but it will collect your information and put you at risk.
• If you do find yourself on a suspicious site look for the lock.  A secure site will have a lock symbol on the bottom right of your browser. Also the URL will be HTTPS instead of HTTP. Never put information in a site that is not secured.
• If you think you may be on a suspicious site, or your gut is telling you something just is not right you can use this trick to test the site. Enter in a wrong password. If the site is a fake one it will accept what ever you put in it and likely then put you on a page that will something like “Website down for maintenance” Or some other similar message.
• This one I can not stress enough, do not use the same login information for multiple sites. I know its a pain to keep separate logins and passwords, but its worth it. Whats more of a pain discovering that your account has been drained off all your money, or your credit cards are maxed out, or memorizing a few different user names and passwords?
• On of the easiest ways to spot a phishing email is to look at the grammar and spelling.   Like I said earlier these crooks are getting much better at their craft, but many of them are still sloppy and you should be able to spot spelling and grammar errors.

Unfortunately phishing is on the rise and it shows no signs of stopping. Follow the tips above, check your bank balances, and credit card statements often and look for any anomaly’s that may show your accounts have been compromised. If anything looks suspicious do not hesitate to call your financial institution  to have them check into it for you.

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Zappos Hacked

Online shoe retailer Zappos.com was recently a victim of a cyber attack which lead to 24 million accounts being hacked. You can read more about it here.  We want to inform our customers on how this can effect them, and what they should be worried about.

First off the breach could have been much worse, and Zappos has been diligent in their efforts to minimize the impact this will cause to its customers. The breach contained, names, email address, physical address, and the last 4 digits of your credit card numbers. Most of this information is easy to obtain, and most likely will present it self as any type of threat to your credit.  What we are concerned with here for our customers is where this information went and how it will be used. Our security experts warn you to be very careful in the upcoming months about phishing scams. The thieves could use the information stolen to then send out emails that look official asking for you to verify your account, and to give up personal information. This could come from email or even a phone call. Know that you should never give away your password or private data over the telephone or email. A company will never ask for this information.

The next threat we potentially see is that if you have used your same account information in multiple places. For example if you use the login you have at Zappos for any, and I can not stress this enough, any other site, you need to change them as soon as you can. It is very important to not use the same login and passwords on multiple sites on the web for this very reason. If one system gets hacked, then the hackers could then have access to all of your accounts.

Zappos has sent out instructions on the steps you need to take to secure your account with them, they can be found here.

We will keep you up to date on if anything changes in this case, but for now we do not see this as a major threat to your online identity. For those of your enrolled in our credit monitoring service you will receive updates if there are any changes to your account.  If you are not in our program and you have other accounts that use the same login and password as your Zappos account, I would highly recommend signing up for credit monitoring for the next few months to ensure that no damage is being done, and so you can catch it early!

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3 Credit Scores? huh?

Q.  Why are there 3 credit scores? What gives?

A.  Experian, Transunion, and Equifax all use there own scoring system. So that is where the three scores come from. While ll three scores should be somewhat close, they all used different data and algorithms to come up with there own scores. And everyone will argue that theirs is the best and most accurate.  Regardless of whose is best, you have 3 scores, and they are all different, and you need to know all three.  Most creditors when you are applying for credit will take an average of all three, but some may choose to only use the lowest score.

And as I said they should be fairly close to each other sometimes that just is not the case. Since all three bureaus collect their own data and compute the scores from the data they have on hand, its normal to have a slight variation in the scores.  What can happen is that one report may have some information that is wrong, or for some reason has not been reported to the the other bureaus and that score could take a huge hit. This is why it is so important to monitor all three credit scores.

A common myth is that all 3 bureaus work together and share data, and unfortunately that is not true.  You also have to remember that these are private companies, and that offer a separate credit score is a way for them to generate revenue.  The place you are looking to get credit, or even credit monitoring services like ours have to pay for the reports, and the scores, so I would not expect the 3 scores to change anytime soon!

 

 

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