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More blogging from the ID Theft Summit in LA
Posted on Feb 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Right now Mari Frank is talking. She’s quite a good speaker. Interesting fact: 10 billion pre approved credit card offers were sent last year! She is a victim herself. She has a fascinating story about a victim (Raymond Lorenzo) she’s helping. She said the story is on her radio show web site. this guy had his life ruined by an imposter…many fraudulent financial accounts, and felony convictions in his name. Some tips…never change your social security number to deal with ID theft, checks are NOT safe than credit cards, the police are NOT the first people you callif oyu’re a victim (call the credit reporting agencies first), watch out for ATM/DEbit cards that use a Mastercard/Visa logo—don’t use those if you can help it.
Tips. Free from Choicepoint: employer report, insurance report, and landlord/tenant report—all on you. You can also write to Choicepoint and get some free background information from them. www.choicepoint.com. And don’t forget to get your free annual credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com. California is the only state that has an office of privacy protection. Mari has mentioned Choicepoint several times (whew, they are getting reamed here). She also said she is going to be interviewing Choicepoint’s Chef Privacy Officer; not sure where, maybe her radio show?
Update: Now I am blogging from an afternoon session. ID theft prevention tips with Linda and Jay Foley, co-directors of ID Theft Resource Center. Statistics for 2004–2005…after talking to law enforcement, they’ve been seeing 25% incrfease each of the last two years. 10 million victims in 2003, Yet we usually see 10 million victims as the number quoted everywhere…So it’s way more than the 10 million (I agree, I always tell people this 10 million number is bogus). 19,000 victims per day, 13 per minute. Why are Calif, Arizona, Nevada, Texas the top ID theft states? Border states, routes for drugs. Phoenix-Scottsdale is #1 city in US. Linda and Jay say AZ doesn’t do much about ID theft.
Lots of god tips. Here’s a funny one. US Postal Inspectors call the little red flag on your mailbox the “Come Steal Me” flag. Don’t leave outgoing mail in your mailbox…ever. Here’s some ne information they added recently—education of teens, and protecting them. She’s talking about blogs and MySpace—she says teens are putting way too much sensitive information into their MySpace profiles. People are often not who they seem to be online.You DON”T need to provide a SSN for your child to enroll in school. Watch out for bogus online free annual credit report sites. Call this # 877–322–8228 if you want to get a free annual credit report from the real authorized group.
Tags: idtheft, identitytheft, blogging
Filed under: Identity Theft, Truston
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