Helpful miscellaneous articles
regarding our retirement plan and planning.
Like you, I review my retirement nestegg and plan from time to
time. Recently, I went though some
continued education for some credentials I maintain and it occurred to me that
we all could use a review about these issues.
So with your help, we will share and post articles and info that may be
helpful and of interest to many of you in this section.
Wallet is a phone app I use to keep track of my frequent user program pts and
miles. They have published tips about
safeguards against breaches such as Equifax that got many of us.
How to Safeguard Your Financials After the Equifax Breach
by Jess Farley
November 28, 2017
AwardWallet receives
compensation from advertising partners for links on the blog. AwardWallet is an
American Express, Barclaycard, Chase, and CreditCards.com advertising partner.
This content is not provided by any bank advertiser. Opinions expressed here
are author's alone, not those of the issuer, and have not been reviewed,
approved or otherwise endorsed by the issuer. Here's our complete Advertiser
Policy.
Equifax, one of three major U.S. credit reporting agencies, was hacked between May and July this year. The breach potentially exposed credit card details, Social Security numbers, and other personal information of up to 143 million people, along with the drivers license details of roughly 200K of those affected. Putting aside Equifax’s weak response to the breach, the Equifax hack has drawn a ton of press due to the scale of the breach (which may affect almost half of the U.S. population), and due to the nature of information stolen; sensitive personal and financial details.
What are
the Potential Impacts for those affected?
The breach is one of the largest in
U.S. history and potentially leaves those affected vulnerable to identity theft
and fraud. If your data was amongst the treasure trove stolen by the hackers,
they have enough details for identity thieves to impersonate you and could
potentially:- Open credit cards in your name
- Apply for loans or fake bank accounts
- Rent an apartment or business premises
- Lease a vehicle
- Receive medical care
- Put utilities into your name
- Apply for government benefits
What Can
You Do to Safeguard Your Financials?
If you Google ‘protect yourself Equifax breach,’
you’ll turn up all sorts of advice ranging from credit freezes and fraud alerts
to trying to negotiate a new social security number out of the government. But
here’s the thing. You can freeze your credit files with each agency and put
fraud alerts on all your cards and accounts, but if your data was stolen, then
your details are out there, and most likely on sale for the highest bidder.
Your identity can still be stolen even if you freeze your credit reports. The
hackers aren’t required to use your details in the first month or the first
three months. They could sit on that data for the next year (or longer) before
they do anything with it.So. What can you do to protect yourself from the Equifax breach? It turns out, quite a lot.
Assume Your Data Was Stolen
Equifax has set up a website to
determine if your account was affected by the breach. Enter your
credentials including the last 6 digits of your SSN, and you’ll find out if
your details were stolen.Or you won’t … Equifax’s record on this breach is deplorable. From the initial announcement made 6 weeks after the breach was discovered, to the second announcement on October 2 letting people know that even if the website said no the first time, it may say yes if you come back and repeat the process now. If you have a Social Security number, assume your data was taken and plan accordingly.
Additionally, check out the site ;–have i been pwned?. It allows you to check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach. You can also sign up for alerts — and it is totally free.
Monitor Your Credit Scores and Credit
Reports
There are plenty of free services to
monitor your credit score and credit report.CreditKarma.com provides data from Equifax and TransUnion, while FreeCreditScore.com provides data from Experian. If that’s not enough for you to digest, you can receive an additional full copy of your credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and Transunion through AnnualCreditReport.com at least once a year.
Also, don't forget, your credit card issuer likely provides you a credit score and some alerting on a monthly basis. However, don't solely rely on this; you also need your credit reporting data! Bonus: If you've got a Discover Card, they'll do monitoring/alerting for your SSN on known risky websites and the dark web.
Perform a
Background Check on Yourself With LexisNexis
While the majority of identity theft
or impersonation in the U.S. involves credit cards, with the information,
Equifax let slip through its fingers identity thieves could be giving your name
and details to rental companies or collections agencies, banks, or government
departments.If you want to get a complete picture of where you stand, order a Full File Disclosure Report from LexisNexis.com. The report performs a comprehensive background check and will let you know every detail on file from banks and government databases to auto-insurance and traffic violations. It’s a thorough background check you can access for free, comprehensive enough that the one we received here at AwardWallet following the breach measured 124 pages of details. We couldn't find any info restricting how often you can apply for the report, so we're assuming you can do so more than once per year.
Also, when you get your report, keep it safe. If you haven't been a victim of identity theft and someone nefarious gets ahold of the report, you might not like the outcome.
Some things you'll see in your LexiNexis Report (all taken from LexisNexis):
- C.L.U.E.® Auto Claims Report – The C.L.U.E.® Auto report provides
a seven-year history of automobile insurance losses associated with an
individual. The following data will be identified for each loss: date of
loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as
policy number, claim number and insurance company name. (Sample Report)
- C.L.U.E.® Property Claims Report – The C.L.U.E.® Personal Property report
provides a seven-year history of losses associated with an individual and
his/her personal property. The following data will be identified for each
loss: date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general
information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company
name. (Sample Report)
- Current Carrier® Reports – Summarizes historical home and auto
coverage information provided by participating insurance companies. Used
to assess current insurance coverage as well as identify gaps in prior
underwriting. (More
Details)
- InsurView™ – Provides attributes using public data.
Used for insurance underwriting and insurance prescreen. (More
Details)
- Traffic Violation Search – Provides search results from public
records. used to assess applications and renewals of insurance
underwriting.
- Banko® Report – Provides search results from national
court records regarding bankruptcies, tax liens, judgments. Used to
monitor developments that could affect a current account relationship. (More Details)
- Benefits Assessment Report – Provides search results from public
records, including property and personal information. Used my public
assistance agencies to evaluate applications for government benefits.
- Collections Decisioning Report – Provides search results from public
records. used to determine a consumer's ability to pay an outstanding
debt. (More Details)
- Life Public Records Disclosure Report® – Provides search results from public
records. Used for underwriting life insurance.
- RiskView Report – Provides search results from public
records. Used by lenders to evaluate an applicant's ability and
willingness to repay a debt.
Add a
Second Layer of Security to Your Accounts
Using a password manager such as
LastPass, and activating two-factor authentication on every account is now the
new normal if you want your data protected. Most websites and apps holding
sensitive data now offer some form of two-factor authentication, and using a
password manager allows you to store
hundreds of complex passwords, so even if one company is hacked, your
passwords are all different, and the incident is isolated.Also keep in mind that the data that such password managers store will use one-way encryption so even if that data was stolen, it'd be impractical for a thief to try to do anything with it given how difficult it'd be to access the data.
Two-factor authentication should be an absolute must for your primary email program — if someone has access to your email, think about the damage they could otherwise do with password resets!
The Reality
The best defense against data theft
from Equifax, or any of the dozens of companies hacked each year, is to proactively
monitor your credit scores and financial info as part of a routine set of
checks. Just like you monitor credit card accounts to ensure you don’t carry a
balance (rule #1 of the award travelers code), you need to keep an eye on your
financial and credit information on a weekly/monthly basis. And you should be
monitoring your data whether it was taken during the Equifax debacle or not.
Final
Thoughts
Some of our advice may run counter to
information provided by mainstream media, but it’s the same advice we promote
for those that haven’t been subject to identity fraud or stolen data. Our
personal and financial information is increasingly held online, and not every
company takes data security seriously. Even if you freeze your accounts, signup
to the Equifax free credit monitoring service (need to register by January 31,
2018), and put fraud alerts on all your accounts, you’re still at risk of
identity theft now and into the future.As the adage goes, “the best defense is a good offense,” which in credit terms means the best defense against identity theft is; to proactively monitor your credit file and financial information. Take it into your own hands. Because if the hacks such as the Equifax breach teach us anything, it’s that our information is not always in our control. Our only viable play is taking steps to protect our credit scores by monitoring our files, and keeping good records in the event something runs afoul.
~~~~~~~~~
(As
with any of these informative articles, anyone who needs someone to talk to
about
this
very subject contact me and I can direct you to a knowledgeable advisor).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Full post disclaimer in left column. PCN Home Page is located at: http://pcn.homestead.com/home01.html
No comments:
Post a Comment