Credit Karma To Launch Free ID Monitoring Following Equifax Hack (reuters.com)

Credit Karma is launching a new free service that will alert customers if their identity data has been compromised in hacks, the San Francisco-based fintech company said on Friday in the wake of massive breach at credit monitoring agency Equifax. From a report: The new ID monitoring service is being tested and will be available in October, the company said on Friday. Similar to services offered by Symantec-owned LifeLock, CreditKarma will keep track of data breaches and tell customers if they are one of the victims. Customers can then check to use the company's credit monitoring services and flag suspicious activities. The company said it was accelerating the launch of the new service in response to the large data breach at Equifax, where thieves may have stolen personal information of 143 million Americans.

Comments

your money was stolen

[turkeydance]

thought you would like to be third in line to know...Credit Karma

Why?

[arth1]

They're doing this out of the goodness of their heart?
Or, is "free" perhaps not entirely true?

Re:Why?

[Szeraax]

If you've never used CreditKarma, then you don't know. They advertise credit cards and other crap.

This year, they launched a free tax filing service that doesn't try to sell you any crap. Worked quickly and easily and transferred all my info to state without any hassle.

I don't have a problem with their LifeLock equivalent and look forward to continuing to use them.

Maybe a silver lining soon

[Actually, I do RTFA]

If literally half the SSNs in the US are compromised, maybe we can eliminate them as a means of identification.

Re:Maybe a silver lining soon

[Athanasius]

As a means of identification isn't the problem, they can be useful to disambiguate same-name, born in same town etc. The problems arise when they get used as a means of authentication/verification of that identification.

Re:Maybe a silver lining soon

[burtosis]

+1 to this. They are fine as a unique identifier, but using them for any authentication should be a criminal offense.

Re:Maybe a silver lining soon

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They're tied into a verification system that has only knowledge of the ID as proof. While it's possible to change that, easy to replace the whole system than deal with adding verification to the various systems.

Plus, it's hardly futureproof, since it's so used up (over, what 70% of possible SSNs are currently active) that they are reusing SSNs.

Frankly, having a global id seems pretty bad.

Re:why bother?

[reboot246]

Rodney Dangerfield said his wife's credit card was stolen but he decided not to report it since the thief was spending much less than his wife did.

Re:yeah,

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't give Credit Karma all of your details just enough of them to use in order to identify you.
You give them:

An email address
A password you've never used before
Your legal name
Physical address that would be found on a credit report
Date of birth
Last 4 digits of SSN

With this information they can identify you. They then ask you some multiple choice questions based on the credit history they have access to. Stuff like

Did you get a loan from:
A) Loan company A
B) Loan company B
C) Loan company C
D) None of the above

It may be a true question or a trick question because your loan company was not listed or you don't have a mortgage.

They match the answers with the credit information and then let you see credit information. At all times they never let you see the 4 SSN digits or DOB you submitted. They provide you information about your credit to keep you interested in visiting the site and at the same time suggest their partners credit cards. They make all email communication optional.