Identity Theft Reviews

Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post on the ITAC blog. We hope everyone had a restful weekend and have recharged the batteries. This week we have an assortment of stories including the state of NY creating its first “Data Privacy Day,’ as well as CSIS study about our critical infrastructure being vulnerable and a story about identity theft being a concern in Haiti. Scroll down to read all the actionable news you need to kick off your work week. And, as always, please share your thoughts, comments and feedback.

New York Announces Data Privacy Day To Protect Residents From Identity Theft
Governor David A. Paterson and several New York State agencies are today joining with government officials from across the United States and 27 European countries, privacy professionals, academics, legal scholars, representatives of international businesses, and others to promote understanding of privacy best practices and rights through the observance of National Data Privacy Day. As

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There are several steps that you will need to take if you feel you are a victim of identity theft. One is immediately call your creditors and tell them. This way you will have a way to fight charges that are made under your name. You should also file a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus.

You should also file a report with the police department, and check your credit reports. This will allow you to see if any charges have been made that you are not aware of. Check to see that no extra accounts have been set up with your name too. If you have not become a victim of ID theft, consider using identity theft services to help protect yourself in the future.

This will include phone, TV, and other utilities that the thief might be using your name to get accounts with. If you catch it soon enough it may be a lot easier for you to get that good standing back and fix the problems the person has created by stealing your identity.

Don’t skip the part about filing a police report though. I

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Online identity theft has turned into a big potential problem for people these days. The more quickly that technology progresses in order to halt these thieves, the more they become unwavering in their search to discover ways to steal your confidential information. The thing that makes this situation so hard to deal with is that online identity theft appears in more than one form. It can happen through phishing, email fraud and other scams that infiltrate your computer through the internet. That makes identity theft protection something you should be aware of if you spend any time at all online.

Online identity theft means that your confidential details are discovered and used for criminal purposes. This might be anything from your social security number to your credit card information, along with any other confidential and financial details the thieves can utilize. Full Post…

Identity theft is a crime that involves stealing or misrepresenting another person’s personal information in order to commit other crimes, usually involving fraud. Any information such as your name, address, credit card numbers, and social security number can be taken and used to commit identity theft. This is why you need to pay close attention to your personal information and protect it at all times.

Whether you are looking specifically to prevent medical identity theft, online identity theft, or just identity theft in general, there are several courses of action that are considered to be the best means of  identity theft protection that you are going to want to be aware of.

One idea for the best way to prevent identity theft is to shred all your documents containing personal information on them. This way you can be sure that they are destroyed and that no one is going to be able to take them and then use them against you in order to steal your identity.

Another best way to prevent identity theft is to never loan your credit cards out to anyone. Yo

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Did you know that there is a list of the top 20 movies that involve hackers and cyber crime? Well, it turns out that Hollywood has been cranking out hacker-related movies since 1974 when The Conversation came out – which takes on the theme of surveillance and the violation of people’s privacy (although there are no computers in the movie).

From that point on Hollywood has been developing such popular films as Tron, War Games and Real Genius — all the way up to more recent films like Die Hard 4. Of course, how could we all forget Sandra Bullock who plays a software engineer who loses her identity to digital thieves in the 1995 film The Net?

So, the reality is that all of these films are a bit dated and cliched about cyber crime. We wonder if we will see more films that involve the truth behind cyber security: a hero fighting an unseen organized crime group, or hackers from a rogue nation? Eitherway, Hollywood always has an interesting — if not somewhat out-of-touch with reality — take on things. But who a

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No one wants to think of a tragedy like the Haiti earthquake in conjunction with charity scams, but unfortunately there are a lot of people out there willing to make a buck any way they can. A charity scam provides the perfect opportunity to rip people off. Many individuals who are very wary when it comes to ‘get rich quick’ schemes are more than willing to open their wallets without question to help other people.

Recognizing charity scams

Obviously, charity scams takes advantage of your willingness to help others. But beware: just about anyone can solicit money to help the Haiti earthquake, or Russian orphans, or Middle Eastern war victims. And while it might feel selfish to hold back, you want to be sure that you’re helping the people who really need help — not a bunch of identity thieves.

How can you recognize a charity scam? There are a couple of dead giveaways:

1.

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If you are not the one who has got his identity stolen many times, I am certain, you are not aware of the credit bureau responsibilities as described in The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. This knowledge will help you in form a realistic expectation from the credit bureau.

Duties of the credit bureau

The Credit bureau has following obligations:

1. The credit bureau is bound by rule to provide you free annual credit reports.
2. It has to provide credit scores.
3. The credit bureau need to enable one-call fraud alert.
4. Each and every investigation should be completed within 30 days. It may take 45 days if more documents is sought and provided.
5. It is the duty of the credit bureau to inform you within 5 days, if it feels that you have not provided enough documents to take your case forward. If it fails to do so then it must provide all the documents you send to the information provider (the vendor).

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