Most people do not realize how vulnerable they are to credit fraud. The social security hack of most people’s personal information should be a wakeup call. I received a notice this week that my health insurance company had been hacked and that they would pay for two years of fraud protection. The letter said the information to receive the protection was enclosed but it was not. I keep getting nudges to protect myself from financial fraud and theft (like the government) but I found that many services have raised their rates. Like illegal alien rights, the government and justice system are not on the side of justice or helping people.
If I was in a position to do so, I would automatically freeze everyone’s credit by the three consumer reporting agencies. You can always unlock a freeze temporarily. Imagine an act by a politician that would help people?
The first step is to secure your credit is to freeze it:
Equifax Security Freeze
P.O. Box 105788
Atlanta, GA 30348
1-800-685-1111 <= preferred
www.equifax.com
Experian Security Freeze
P.O. Box 9554
Allen, TX 75013
1-888-397-3742 <= preferred
www.experian.com
Transunion
P.O. Box 160
Woodlyn, PA 19094
1-888-909-8872
www.transunion.com <= preferred (you have to make an account)
Total time to freeze all three is about 10 minutes. You have to freeze all three to ensure no fraud occurs. You can also receive a free credit report once a year for free. I did this one time and saw that I had a credit card with a balance in California. I reported it to the credit bureau and never received a response back.
With the government sponsored invasion to replace American citizens and destroy the middle class, this is a prudent action that may save your future.
Update:
Could someone access my credit report even though I placed a freeze on it?
Yes, but only in certain situations that are allowed by federal law. A freeze won’t stop someone from checking your credit in order to:
- Underwrite insurance
- Review your account or collection (maintain, monitor, upgrade or enhance your account, or increase your credit line)
- Provide credit monitoring services you subscribed to
You can find a detailed list of exceptions here.
David DeGerolamo
I saw the article on ZH last week as well, and today’s article referencing the one website where you can check:
https://npd.pentester.com/search
I plugged my info in. It had every address I ever lived at save two. My parent’s home, college apartments (with phone #’s at the time!), all of the homes I’ve owned (but the current one), my SS# was tied to several entries, various old phone numbers… It’s my info, all in there.
I believe this may be a big one, even before I found all of my stuff on it. Looking into the credit-freeze thing today as well.
Thank You Dave for putting this info out so other folks can take action on this matter. this is why I pay for Life Lock Services myself. Life Lock also protects your title insurance from getting used by crooks who have ways of changing your title insurance and ownership of your home and then they borrow large sums of money against your home, and you are stuck with bill.
Lifelock has exclusions and limited liability. Plus they raised their rates.
Even freezing all three credit reporters is no guarantee. If a predator can contrive to simulate your identity, he can unfreeze them — and simulating another person’s identity over the World Wide Web is not impossible. Indeed, it’s simpler than it appears.
Two-factor authentication everywhere provides even better protection, though there may still be a chink in the armor.
Correct. The information above is a good start. If a credit company unfreezes your account due to fraud, they may be held responsible for damages. When I froze two of my accounts, they sent a corresponding code to my cell phone before freezing the account. The third has a user id and password associated with it. Even the credit protection services have limited liability and exclusions.
I always suspected the credit bureaus had a hand in the hacks. Who benefits the most but them? Who else gets us dumb humans to update all our personal information for them and then they sell us credit protection services. Don’t forget how many times the credit bureaus themselves are hacked. This whole this things seems like a giant tracking scheme and we play right into their hands. Nothing is as it seems and it smells like a rat.
I recall my grandparents never using credit after living through the great depression. They didn’t trust the banks either. How many of your grandparents kept a large portion of their money under the mattress or buried in the yard?
Oh I almost forgot to mention the so called social security hack was of a private company who scrapes personal information from sources available to the public. The Social Security Adminstration was not hacked. The headline was misleading.
Remember those rewards programs, store credit cards, fake credit apps/insurance offers in your mail, sweepstakes, assessors rolls, petitions you signed, family tree/DNA companies and many more, most of which have your signature, name, address, phone number, etc… If you read the fine print, your information can be sold(shared) to whomever? Social media, birth notices, obituaries can be used to tie it together. Now go out on the internet and research what information an identity thief needs to steal your identity. However sometimes its not an identity thief but a personal infomation broker like the one that was just hacked of 2.9 billion records of living and dead people. Your personal information is like gold, protect it as such. Never give it away over the phone and know who you are talking to. If your haven’t seen the recent movie “The Beekeeper” I highly suggest watching it. The older movie “Snowden” is also a good one.
One more thing, just the act of checking to see if your personal information is out there can be used as confirmation to increase the confidence level of the data already collected on you.
Thank you for posting this.
Thank you for posting this. We froze our credit 10-plus years ago, but check it every year to be sure the freeze remains in place. Anyone who does not do this, in this day and age, is risking very nearly everything.