In today’s Journal, Jane J. Kim writes very clearly about the different tools that are now available to consumers to protect themselves against identity theft. The article explains the advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Great reporting!
WSJ on Credit Freeze, Monitoring, Alerts
Comments
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So with all these new tools and options, it looks like the market is working a solution to the problem. Less chance that we need to enact laws to protect the consumers. Why have government intrusion where the market works? Hey, Thanks WSJ!
Here’s a totally insane thought: What with the property rights enshrined in our rule-of-law model, how come me, the piddly individual consumer doesn’t own my own data? You’da thunk that as long as the government was ensuring that IP was protected for Microsoft and Phrma thus enabling their cash flow, they’d have some thoughts on protecting my individual property as well. Probably sounds thoroughly communist.
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I get:
Page not found – /denialism/2007/10/%3Cbr%20/%3Ehttp:/online.wsj.com/article/SB119318394702669159.html
when I try to hit this link. Any ideas? Thanks. -
Thanks for the post. It seems very DMA-like in that one has to proactively request it, then pay for a freeze on information. (Yes, I realize it would completely ruin their business model to have sharing opt-in 😉
Any idea if the “Freeze” has similar loopholes? For example, with DoNotCall.gov, they exempt non-profits, political organizations (which I’m ruing the weeks before the election) and businesses with which you have had a “prior relationship.”
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I have my credit frozen. You can’t open any line of credit without calling the bureaus and requesting a temporary lift. (This is remarkably painless, I’ve done it twice now.)
However, companies can still get access to your credit history and information. It’s not a privacy barrier.
I totally recommend it. Easy to set up, and easy to take down. The $30 fee (in my state) is completely worth it.
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@Ted–credit monitoring is the product of the market, and I think it was Trans Union that initially created the fraud alert (which was later codified in federal law), but credit freeze is a creation of the California legislature.
@Jim–even with a freeze, some companies (and the government) can get access to your file. For instance, companies that you already do business with (your existing credit cards, mortgage, etc) can get the file.
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@Ted–credit monitoring is the product of the market, and I think it was Trans Union that initially created the fraud alert (which was later codified in federal law), but credit freeze is a creation of the California legislature.
Sarcasm aside, I think that state laws in this case are not as good as federal regulations would be if the legislators embraced our side; consumer protection and an individual owning and controlling their own workproduct (consumption history?).
I believe that local laws are being used by lobby interests to obfuscate the issue solution and to kick the ball down the field. It is in their business interests to have an incomprehensible and dissimilar patchwork of laws based on local lobbying efforts.
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I don’t think you can exactly say that the market has been working towards a solution. The big three credit bureaus only recently caved in to making credit freeze available to everyone. In fact, they only caved in after 39 states had enacted laws requiring the ability to freeze your credit. I would say that’s the market begrudgingly reacting to legal forces, not capitalistic ones.
What I don’t like is that, in states that don’t require it to be free, you have to pay to freeze your credit. That’s making you pay to opt out of something you may not want in the first place. Identity theft of children is on the rise, since it often goes undetected for years. Just as with the Do Not Call list, you should be able to opt out for free, especially since we’re talking about three private companies that are benefiting financially from doing close to nothing about abuses of their data.
I think the credit freeze should be free and then you should only have to pay to have it thawed each time. Banks and credit card companies could of course then offer to pay the fee for thawing your credit.
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