San Diego, CA Veterans and active duty servicemembers
whose personal information may have been stolen are being
offered a salve credit monitoring - which is a feel good
response, but provides a false sense of security. When it
comes to identity theft prevention measures, relying on
credit monitoring is similar to placing only one smoke
detector in a three story home.
The San Diego based Institute of Consumer Financial
Education (ICFE), which certifies credit report reviewers
and identity theft risk management specialists, cautions
potential victims to carefully review and understand the
limitations of credit monitoring. Credit monitoring will
not alert the consumer if someone has obtained a driver s
license, birth certificate, Social Security card, or used
their name during interactions with law enforcement,
resulting in arrest warrants or erroneous criminal
records.
Most credit monitoring services only monitor one bureau.
Some provide an initial three-bureau report on the first
order, and then revert to monitoring only one. Many
creditors report to the bureaus only once a-month or
quarterly. In cases involving utility accounts, it may
never be reported until after it has been sent to
collections. With very rare exceptions, credit monitoring
does not monitor specialty-reporting companies or check
verification companies.
Credit monitoring will not report to the victim in a
timely fashion, if at all, when an identity thief has
taken a job using the victim's name and Social Security
number -- in some States, this type of employment fraud
approaches one-third of all identity theft cases -- and
causes significant financial cost, unexpected tax
consequences, and embarrassment to the victim.
ICFE urges opting-out of pre-screened credit offers,
placing Fraud Alerts on credit files, and instituting a
credit Freeze where available. Fraud alerts are
temporary (90-day) intended to alert potential credit
issuers the consumer is or may be a victim of fraud.
Credit freezes prevents most third parties from accessing
the consumer s credit file. States permitting all
consumers to request a credit file freeze are California,
Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont and
Wisconsin.
States that permit only ID theft victims to request
freeze are Hawaii, Kansas, South Dakota, Texas
and Washington.