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Time to Monitor & Protect Personal Information due to the Theft of 143 Million Credit Users Personal Info


snowyco

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Over half of Americans' personal information has been stolen from Equifax - as Equifax has lost our ... Drivers License info,  Social Security Numbers, birthdates & addresses.

The link below offers 7 actions each of us can take to try to remedy the problems.
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https://yucalandia.com/2017/09/08/143-million-credit-information-accounts-hacked-at-experian-what-to-do/

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Thanks for this. Can I add that I froze all my credit reports (a pain but worthwhile) when I moved to Mexico. You only need them unfrozen when you make a major purchase, house or car, so for most of us, this is a solution. It prevents access even to hackers. Consider the alternatives!

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Looks like this issue would add to the complication of living abroad. The poster that froze before moving made a wise decision.  But what about those who didn't. Wondering if expats routinely have credit monitoring and what would happen, especially now, if bogus accounts pop up. Getting resolution is hard enough in country, let alone Mexico. Currently all phone circuits are busy. My own credit monitoring program doesn't answer. I tried to get fraud alerts through Equifax, no luck. Who can you trust anymore? Freezing is not as easy as it sounds; there are docs to send to prove ID, and PINs to get sent, but sent where....somewhere in Mexico to an unverified address??

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I read some of the comments and let it go, returning to my manuscript work.  Then, it occurred to me that dismissing credit monitoring could be disastrous for any person, but especially those beyond US borders.  As an example, your personal info was stolen from EQ. Some weeks later, a hard inquiry was made on your report. Since you have no monitoring, you would be unaware that this hard inquiry was based on a fraudulent application for a bank credit card or some other major purchase. You missed your first opportunity to dispute the fraud. Then some days later an account is opened, a fraudulent account in your name.  No monitoring, so you also know nothing about it.  This is now very dangerous and paves the way for a mountain of paperwork to get it off the record.  So, not lecturing, just saying.....

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And understand that you are not the customer, you are the product. These companies sell the info they get on you to lenders and other financial institutions. Your protection is secondary to protecting the credit card companies and bank info. Equifax proclaimed that although 140 million people may have been exposed, their "core" info was safe, we are the victims, but the big institutions pay the bills at Equifax. 

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Love the fact that Equifax offered users a free subscription to extra security, as long as the customer gave up the right to sue. That didn't last long, so they followed up with your free subscription would automatically get billed to you at the end of the year... and that got booted pretty quickly too. What is Equifax doing now to make money off this that we haven't discovered yet? I always thought these guys were government sanctioned... you know, like the Internet governing body. Guess not; they are just another too-big-to-fail corporation.

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Looks like this issue would add to the complication of living abroad. The poster that froze before moving made a wise decision.  But what about those who didn't. Wondering if expats routinely have credit monitoring and what would happen, especially now, if bogus accounts pop up. Getting resolution is hard enough in country, let alone Mexico. Currently all phone circuits are busy. My own credit monitoring program doesn't answer. I tried to get fraud alerts through Equifax, no luck. Who can you trust anymore? Freezing is not as easy as it sounds; there are docs to send to prove ID, and PINs to get sent, but sent where....somewhere in Mexico to an unverified address??

I have not frozen all my credit cards because the ones I have contain alerts that I use . I set my alerts to be very stringent. I know within minutes of a transaction. And companies like American express  have great A.I that look for anomalies in spending and I have been called within minutes of transactions after they put the card on hold and denied the charges. Happened to me 3 weeks ago when  small charges were being made in a city far away and they didn't match my profile. I am not saying not to freeze I am just adding that these credit card companies are getting very smart with new technologies coming on and if you look at their websites many have extensive alerts. and we are heading to a cashless society in the years to come. Already being tested in another country on a small time basis. 

 

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I have not frozen all my credit cards because the ones I have contain alerts that I use . I set my alerts to be very stringent. I know within minutes of a transaction. And companies like American express  have great A.I that look for anomalies in spending and I have been called within minutes of transactions after they put the card on hold and denied the charges. Happened to me 3 weeks ago when  small charges were being made in a city far away and they didn't match my profile. I am not saying not to freeze I am just adding that these credit card companies are getting very smart with new technologies coming on and if you look at their websites many have extensive alerts. and we are heading to a cashless society in the years to come. Already being tested in another country on a small time basis. 

 

Michael,

Freezing your credit has nothing to do with existing credit cards. Any existing line of credit or account can still access your information even if frozen. The freeze simply prevents any *new* loans or lines of credit or accounts without a one-time PIN number. Freezing prevents identity theft, completely separate thing from alerts on existing cards.

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On ‎9‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 5:09 AM, dixonge said:

Michael,

Freezing your credit has nothing to do with existing credit cards. Any existing line of credit or account can still access your information even if frozen. The freeze simply prevents any *new* loans or lines of credit or accounts without a one-time PIN number. Freezing prevents identity theft, completely separate thing from alerts on existing cards.

Looks like you're one of the few taking this seriously. Here is my stateside "freezing" experience for those abroad who are taking it seriously.

1. For all bureaus, freeze sites are intermittent because of the huge server demand, so be patient.

2. Trans Union. I used True ID and Locked. Fairly fast and convenient. No charges.

3. For Experian, delays in bringing up page, but then it works well, but be prepared for a lot of security questions, so better be very familiar with the contents of your credit files. Cost me $5.00 and PIN provided online, no mail.

4. For the offending beast Equifax, very long delays in bringing up page, but they're not charging and not asking a lot of questions (could be a bad sign). Be sure to have Adobe Acrobat because your PIN will be provided on that platform and will be provided online, no mail. It is a random 10-digit number.  If you run the program without Adobe, you'll have to call to arrange for a PIN to be mailed. Way too sloppy and inconvenient.

5. I also have credit monitoring. Alerts are fine, but that can mean you already have a hard inquiry you don't know.  Now you have the inconvenience of investigating it yourself and an account may be in the process of establishing itself, just more disputes, more problems.

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10 minutes ago, seoulguy said:

Looks like you're one of the few taking this seriously. Here is my stateside "freezing" experience for those abroad who are taking it seriously.

1. For all bureaus, freeze sites are intermittent because of the huge server demand, so be patient.

2. Trans Union. I used True ID and Locked. Fairly fast and convenient. No charges.

3. For Experian, delays in bringing up page, but then it works well, but be prepared for a lot of security questions, so better be very familiar with the contents of your credit files. Cost me $5.00 and PIN provided online, no mail.

4. For the offending beast Equifax, very long delays in bringing up page, but they're not charging and not asking a lot of questions (could be a bad sign). Be sure to have Adobe Acrobat because your PIN will be provided on that platform and will be provided online, no mail. It is a random 10-digit number.  If you run the program without Adobe, you'll have to call to arrange for a PIN to be mailed. Way too sloppy and inconvenient.

5. I also have credit monitoring. Alerts are fine, but that can mean you already have a hard inquiry you don't know.  Now you have the inconvenience of investigating it yourself and an account may be in the process of establishing itself, just more disputes, more problems.

So, you did all this online?

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Perhaps you didn't notice my post about setting up an account with Credit Karma and will get notifications about any hard inquires or any activity on any of your credit reports. No need to freeze anything. 

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12 hours ago, tomgates said:

Perhaps you didn't notice my post about setting up an account with Credit Karma and will get notifications about any hard inquires or any activity on any of your credit reports. No need to freeze anything. 

Tom, perhaps we did notice your post and simply disagreed. It all comes down to the hassle factor. To you, freezing and unfreezing your credit is an unacceptable level of hassle. To others, such as myself, having to clear up any unauthorized use of our identity and/or credit is an unacceptable level of hassle. 

In the past the risk of identity theft was acceptable to me. Now, given that anyone on the internet has access to everything they need to create new accounts under my name (and yours) I, personally, find that the risk has grown beyond my level of comfort. It's like having a car and leaving it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. And then you have an alarm service that sends an alert to your phone if someone starts the car. Me, i'd rather have the car locked, no keys in it, and secure in a garage.

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Valid points. Listening to a tech guy on CNBC yesterday saying banks need to step up and do more due diligence on new credit applicants, like make a phone call to them and have a chat. 

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7 hours ago, dixonge said:

Tom, perhaps we did notice your post and simply disagreed. It all comes down to the hassle factor. To you, freezing and unfreezing your credit is an unacceptable level of hassle. To others, such as myself, having to clear up any unauthorized use of our identity and/or credit is an unacceptable level of hassle. 

In the past the risk of identity theft was acceptable to me. Now, given that anyone on the internet has access to everything they need to create new accounts under my name (and yours) I, personally, find that the risk has grown beyond my level of comfort. It's like having a car and leaving it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. And then you have an alarm service that sends an alert to your phone if someone starts the car. Me, i'd rather have the car locked, no keys in it, and secure in a garage.

All of it....right on!  Our fingerprints are everywhere. Some time ago, I watched some vids on Ajijic assisted living homes. When I've made these posts, I'm thinking about the septa/octagenarians and over who undoubtedly have credit files, but may well be entirely oblivious to the recent happenings.  What about them? What happens when they start (hypothetically) receiving past dues from creditors they never heard of?? Additional note: Long ago I invested in hidden ISP tunneling for all private Internet use; mine is called Pure VPN. It is based in Hong Kong. It's my next best friend on the Internet.

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