The article in CNET blog news talks about a reporter, who ridiculed the media about the fuss they make, when the discs with some bank’s customers’s names and info is lost or stolen. He made his bank account number public and challenged the thieves to access it. They did.
The same article mentions a LifeLock company, which offers an ID Theft protection and what happened, when its CEO listed his SSN in the newspaper ad. That happened a few years ago. I hope the security of the company is tighter now.
Read this article here: CNET News
Now you know, that any piece of personal information may be a potential target and being overly protective of everything personal is not a paranoid behavior.
Also, I wrote about ID Theft before, but a new development on the subject prompted me to come back to this topic again.
In my post Feeze your Credit Report and How to use SMS to Search Google/ I wrote about the measures you have to take in order to stop uninvited inquiries into your credit report.
At that time it involved a lot of effort and paperwork exchange. Now, things have changed.
When you sign up to Equfax, which provides “Easy, immediate online access to a line-by-line comparison of your 3 nationwide credit reports, daily monitoring of all 3 credit reports with customizable alerts of any key changes, fraud specialists available 24/7″, for additional $2 you have an option of blocking the inquiries to your records yourself. The feature is called “Equfax Credit Report Control”. The options it provides:
“* Lock and unlock your Equifax credit file online quickly and easily.
* Provides the flexibility to temporarily unlock your Equifax credit file for all or specific companies
* Email notifications of changes made to the lock status of your Equifax credit file
* An online history of the changes to your lock status”.
This service gives you a piece of mind in case someone manages to get your personal info and tries to open a new account in your name. The inquiry should be stopped and you’ll be alerted of the activity.
For more info on this subject please read: Equfax Credit Report Control
Here is a welcome page of the agency: www.equifax.com
