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New Legislation to Combat Identity Theft
coondoggie writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that new legislation in a numbers of states and the District of Columbia allows consumers to place a "security freeze" on their credit files. "For the millions of consumers who receive notice each year that their personal or financial data was lost or stolen, a preemptive security freeze can offer peace of mind. It blocks businesses and potential fraudsters from gaining access to a consumer's credit report and score and from granting new lines of credit in the consumer's name. In many states, consumers who want to remove the freeze can use a special identification number to unlock access to their credit file."
Yeah, that's a good idea... So how many ID-Ten-T consumers are going to carry this number around -- in their wallets/purses or leave them unsecured in a filing cabinet? When will legislators get a clue that most people are complete ignorant about the security of almost anything?
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If you aren't buying a house, car, or a new credit card, you should preemptively freeze your credit and leave it that way.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
They should tell the reporting agencies they have 30 days, and then they have to stop using SSN.
How they fix it it their business.
OTOH, with ID theft becoming more common, reporting agency will eventually be worthless since no one can depend on their reports anymore.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just give us one time keys.
If I can use a piece of important information only once before it changes then nobody can replay it.
Incidentally, how do you prove you are you to actually put the freeze/unfreeze in place?
liqbase
I wonder how many people will give up their secret security freeze number to phishers?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Whoever lets someone use a stolen identity to get a loan or credit card or whatever should be responsible for all damages. That means forgiving the loan and restoring the credit of the victim as well as paying damanges if the victim's credit history took a hit.
Seriously, it's not my job to make sure you verify the identity of your clients and I shouldnt have any consequences if you dont do it right.
Also, anybody who loses data used to steal an identity should be responsible for the consequences. If you run over a pedestrian on a sidewalk you pay te medical bills right?
There's a private company (Lifelock is the one I hear on the radio all the time) that also has the ability to lock down your credit. No new legislation required, it would seem. Of course, that costs money so maybe this legislation just enables individuals to lock their credit at the taxpayer's expense.
This is also supposed to stop those pre-approvals that constantly clog up your mailbox... (well, mine at least.)
More Twoson than Cupertino
Really, how many people who haven't been the victims of fraud are going to spend money AND TIME putting these "freezes" on their records?
Instead, why not "freeze" them by default?
Then if the customer WANTS to open a new credit account, the fee to "unfreeze" can be rolled into the new account.
If the customer wants someone to do a credit check on him, the fee can be rolled into the new account OR paid by the organization doing the check.
Why pass a law that doesn't, by default, protect EVERYONE?
There are credit monitoring services that will watch your credit files for you for a monthly fee. In addition, you can get one credit report for free from each of the 3 major credit bureaus by going to http://www.annualcreditreport.com.
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But when you need the credit you need it.
If its as simple as calling the credit agency and supplying another number to them, aren't the criminals just going to start swapping these numbers as well as credit card numbers?
It doesn't stop anything, just introduces a new charge to pay.
liqbase
What is it, something like 20,000 separate laws "controlling" the ownership and use of guns, yet we still get VaTech?
And, of course, whenever those don't work, why, we'll just PASS MORE LAWS!
How great to be a politician, where you're never graded on what you actually do, just what you SAY.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I was thinking this exact same thing.
How often in a year do you open new credit lines? There will be times in your life where you need instant access to get new credit lines, also many times where you are settled and would be better off frozen.
At the same time, this prevents nothing and only complicates the process. Thieves will adjust and unfreeze your account. If they have your identity, they are you. what do you do if you dont remmeber your recurity code, you call and have it reset. but you is them in this case. they still got you.
Now it opens up another way your ex can harras you. They call up as you and freeze your credit line with a code you dont know.
does it also prevent your credit report from getting pulled? that sounds like a nice way to hide from creditors you owe money too.
Dont get me wrong, I like the idea. but nothing is ever simple.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I could make a very long winded post about this, but what I believe is really very simple: all personal info should be private by default.
Any time anyone wants any of of my personal info, be it SS#, Credit Report, phone number, address, email address, et al. they should be required to get my authorization before it can be released or even used. Kinda like medical/health info except done a lot more robustly. I'd go so far as to advocate serious jail time for individuals who abuse my personal info, for instance all the laptops that various government agencies manage to lose. I'd hope the threat of years in a federal penitentiary would do the trick.
I'm not holding my breath, but it pisses me off to no end that I have to maintain so much of a defense of my information.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
What keeps the perp from stealing your identity, freezing your record, and then using the ID number they give him to loot your accounts while you're locked out?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And what lobbyists were in on this "legislation"? Hmmmm, do you think the credit bureaus and the banks? Hmmmm????
Sorry, whenever there's "Legislation" I automatically think that the industry lobbyists wrote it.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
The Post also ran a much longer, more in-depth piece looking at the process of passing freeze legislation in Delaware, easily the most banking- and business-friendly state in the union. That piece is here
One highlight, which looks at the role of the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), the lobbyist group that works for the data broker industry and the credit bureaus:
"Goldberg, who has worked with advocates in more than a dozen states to enact freeze legislation, said that in 2005 the CDIA and the credit-reporting agencies shifted their strategy. They no longer were outright opposed to credit-freeze laws; instead, they worked to convince states to allow the bureaus to charge as much as possible when consumers place, lift or remove credit freezes. "The credit reporting agencies clearly want consumers to pay more for the security freeze than we certainly think they should," Goldberg said. "But given that those same agencies collect all of this sensitive financial data about consumers and then turn around and sell it, we think they should also have the obligation to protect the consumer, and that's where the security freeze comes in.
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
I'm still amiss as to how people can still get their personal data stolen and their lives ruined by thieves in this way. To me, the biggest problem is the credit reporting agencies themselves who are very anti-consumer. By that, I mean they will very easily and quickly put on a bad credit remark, but are slow to remove it if it's a mistake. Even then, the whole idea of verifying identity in financial transactions is very loose to these guys who only require a name and SSN.
This is one of the problems that requires long-overdue federal legislation to remedy. It needs to consist of the following:
* Complete elimination of the use of SSNs by non-governmental agencies to track individuals, including employers and insurers
* Disallowing tracking numbers for enumeration of individuals to remain the same across any two or more private organizations
* Requirement of independently-verifiable photo and/or hashed/digitally-signed/analog biometric verification of the purchaser for large purchases on credit (not all of the above necessarily - even an original copy of a fingerprint plus a photograph of the person with the contract would be sufficient)
* Increased onus on creditors to prove that the alleged debtor was, in fact, the person responsible for the purchase or transgression in question via the identification as above
* Severe criminal penalties (up to life imprisonment) and civil penalties ($250,000 or triple the value of the offense, whichever is greater, per offense) for those who purposely attempt to steal identities, subvert the security measures for the purpose of identity theft, or facilitate the reporting of false information on debtors for which adequate steps have not been taken to verify identity
* Mandatory FIPS-based security for the storage of personal information
* Withholding of derogatory credit information that is in dispute during the time that affected individuals are making a proper challenge to said derogatory information
Do all of that, and what you'll find is that this problem will vaporize overnight. It won't prevent other problems such as outright credit card theft (for which there are separate solutions anyway), but it will cut this problem off where it needs to be cut off.
Call me paranoid, naysayer, whatever - but I agree with other posters who say that everyone's report should be frozen by default, and no information should ever be allowed to be accessed (or, arguably, even exist) without your express written consent.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
So why not pass a law that says that banks are responsible for all the debt racked up in such accounts. That might focus the banks minds a little on making sure that the customer really is who (s)he says (s)he is.
Then just to make it really clear that the government would like everyone to stop relying on SSN as a valid form or idendification, ssn.gov should post every single SSN ever issued together with name and birthdate.
Sure this is great if your identity is stolen to use your credit to rip some business off. But it does NOTHING to prevent people from using your identity when pulled over for a traffic ticket. It happened to me. Here in California all you need to do is tell a cop you don't have your ID, then give them someone else's information so they can run through the computer, when it checks out, they write that person a ticket with the other person's name. That person drives off scot free and a few monthes later you get a warrant out for your arrest for Failure to Appear in court. Let me tell you the pit in your stomach when you are wrongly accused of a crime, your insurance refuses to renew you, your local DMV refuses to renew your license, you get to drive to work with no license and insurance and you can't even go into a bar because your drivers license cannot be renewed. Of course you only find out about this just before your license is about to expire, when you need a license the most because you have no way of looking up your driving records for free. Then you get to go to court, in my case in Northern California when I live in San Diego to prove using ATM slips, credit card reciepts, and your signature and a picture of your car that you not only don't match the description of this person but that you have tons of paper trail to prove you never left your home town and tons of witnesses to say you were at work that day. Its a huge hassle. Why not make cops take a finger print of anyone they pull over if they can't provide ID, or take their picture. Can a police officer on here please explain to me why they just trust a criminals word when they are giving a name and address that it is as good as a CA Drivers License, that is pathetic.
Send multiple Arnold Schwarzenegger clones back in time to help recover your stolen identity.
If girls liked guys that were interested in them for their brains, they'd date zombies.
but what if I lock your barbecue grill shut and you dont see it until you have several guests in town. I deny instant access to use it. now you have to go get tools to break the lock or change your plan for the evening.
As far as ducking from creditors, I was not very clear at all. If you owe lots of bills/child support and leave town, you can prevent them from using your credit report to hunt you down in your new location. I know its a minor thing, but it does get used that way.
My point about asking how often you open credit lines was to see how viable it is to freeze your own credit line all the time and unlocking it when needed.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
We need federal legislation signed making credit card companies or any organization extending credit civilly and criminally liable for identity theft. In other words if someone under the guise of you opened a Citibank VISA account in your name and rung it up, Citibank could then be sued by you and/or prosecuted for extending credit to someone whose identity was not properly verified.
THEN you'd see some changes taking place. Instead of "oops, sorry" they'd be faced with saying "oops, here's six million for our mistake."
I mean, these guys own the system. They make money off us from their ownership of it. They should be responsible for securing it.
DING DING DING
Why is it that otherwise bright people don't see what kind of royal scam the entire credit culture represents? I'm listening to the radio for the basketball scores from last night and in the last 2-minute commercial break there were THREE spots for a)"repair your credit by buying an out-of-date computer at an inflated price", b) "repair your credit by refinancing your house" and c)for some outfit that will help you negotiate with your creditors so you can stop getting collection calls. The very next spot was for buying consumer electronics with "no payments until 2008!".
In the US we now have a negative savings rate for the first time in history. Is it hard to see where this leads?
You are welcome on my lawn.