If you need to get new credit, as in for the purchase of a house or car, it would be in your best interest to at least monitor your own credit to ensure that your score stays put and your credit is clean. Different states have different laws on how often you can get a credit report and whether or not it is free. Many states' laws support one free report per year. Nothing worse than coming to an agreement to purchase on credit and finding out that you have outstanding debt that you didn't know about that has gone into collections or chargeoff. If you are not in a position to need new credit (don't forget about unplanned expenses due to health or acts of god on property). Then the issue of the fraudulently obtained loan is between the identity thief and the creditor. A fraudulent loan at that point should be nothing more than a nuisance. Of course people have had to get cease and desist orders for aggressive collections agents but if you did not take out the loan, they have no right to your money. The responsibility to confirm that person receiving the loan is actually you rests with the person granting the credit. I'm not a fan of the credit monitoring services, except for credit karma. I would never give up my ability to go after the company who lost my personal information. JMHO...
if you don't need a loan insurance companies check your credit to determine your rates bad credit can increase car insurance rates upto 15%
Thank you, I didn't write my post right. Do I need to check if my name is on that list of hacked names?
I guess one should also consider issues associated with renting an apartment or getting a job that requires a credit check. Better to have clean credit than to have to explain a situation..
Jack Straw I would wait as if you go to website and click whatever you are giving up your right to sue.. I am not a sue happy person but I never gave these credit reporting companies my info and they make millions they knew about this in April and executives sold shares before they let it out.. if their business is too keep these data centers and their security is that lax and I become a victim of identity theft they need to compensate me for those headaches and hours of my life.. I was before and 500 hours of BS proving what you did or did not do is a pain...
You don't NEED to check it. But you should at least routinely see if there is anything unexpected on your credit report.
Sure enough bogieb , I did Credit Karma a few years back too and just got an email from them saying all "looking out for us".
You can check your 3 credit reports for free once a year in all 50 states. TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. I usually check a different report every 4~6 months. Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page This site is provided per federal regulation, read more about it here if you are not familiar: AnnualCreditReport.com - Wikipedia As for identity theft, I really think that is going to be "a thing of the past" in the near future. I have received 30+ "we lost your information" letters. One of them from OPM, complete details of my life since age 15-. There is no way anyone could be expected to protect their data now that it is spread all over the world. Creditors are going to have to begin to do their due diligence and be sure they are crediting actual people. Not to mention, its not my job to protect the banker making bad decisions giving loans to false characters.
The problem with all this is every time a hard credit check is done it lowers your score, close a card lowers your score, open a card lowers your score, applying for a loan even if not taken lowers score, marriage, divorce, even some of the general or soft credit checks can lower your score- some goes away in a couple years some hangs for 7 or more. There is way too much importance placed on these logarithms that determine your score so much so that it can prevent you from getting that job, house loan, car loan, utilities and just about everything else in your life. The worst part is you have virtually no control over it. Mis-information is rampant, trying to correct same is an exercise in frustration. Not to mention that your SS# is not to be used for identification purposes ( federal law- that I do not believe has ever been changed- so therefore based on that alone this is all illegal. Good luck trying to win that one in court eh?
I was warned not to sign up initially as there was some language in the agreement that was surrendering ability to go to court. I believe that has changed now after they were called out on it. My question with these hacks is where is the accountability??? I didn't ask for a credit rating system. I don't ask them to compile data on me. Who is responsible for the veritable and inevitable damages that occur from these hacks? Someone needs to go to prison, and I'm not talking about the hackers. If they insist on having this data for their own gains, they should be accountable when it is lost.
I was going to sign up (actually started the process) but then started reading about the waiver of rights so I haven't gone back for the second part of the signup process...I don't think I "agreed" to anything so far...so what's the latest? Is it OK now or do they still have the waiver in there? I looked online and didn't see where the waiver was taken out...
I think the fine print on the free credit monitoring agreement waives your right to be a part of a class action suit. Not sure, because I didn't read it my self but heard from 2 sources.
From what I read (so TIFWIW) They give you a disclaimer that says you aren't waiving rights, but it isn't in the actual contract itself. so, until they actually change the contract, you take your chances. How big a risk it is really depends on courts (and the company's willingness to do/or nt do the right thing). As a manufacturing company who gets contracts with clauses we disagree with everyday, as long as we get in writing (a signed statement that we provide, or less desirable, an email) then we are usually good and fairly well protected. However, I am unsure how it works in the consumer-to-business world. If you decide to go ahead, make sure you get a screen shot of the non-waiver statement and save it (preferably with the time/date stamp from your computer).
I have heard no further intel at this point, sorry. I'm at a bit of a loss over the whole thing. You think "I'll sign up for life lock" or some other monitoring agency, right? Then you read about how the owner of life lock has had his personal info breached like 6 times by hackers to prove that they could. Now what do I do? I am planning on just keeping an eye on things myself. I have an excellent rating and hopefully any off the wall stuff will be picked up on as fraudulent based on my history. I have had dealings in the past with the DOJ when someone tried to steal my identity. I was unaware until a letter from DOJ showed up in my mailbox.
As I said earlier- banks,credit agencies, ect- all hold themselves harmless. Yet it is their business practices that cause most of the problems. Its like in the old westerns one of the bad guys always seems to have something to do with the bank and is almost untouchable. Only problem with class action suites is by the time it all filters down to you there almost nothing left. Last one I was part of that finally settled after 15 years I got 3 $1.69 checks spaced a year apart on a 750 million settlement- lawyers made a mint on that, which how it mostly is. As far as E-fax stepping up to the plate on a personal level don't hold your breath. If you think you have been compromised- covert everything you can to cold cash and stick it where it can not be accessed by any financial or gov. agency that includes safe deposit boxes( which aren't safe from either of those entities) Cancel all credit cards, eliminate any and all direct deposit and any other on line banking or payment schemes. Empty all bank accounts including checking, iras, and the like and close them. When you pay bills go to Post Office and get their money orders to pay same. If your working for some one go to the payroll department and explain whats going down ask for wages in cash- they may or may not be able to do that. Open a new savings account keeping just enough in it to cover your wage check so you have somewhere to cash it. Do not deposit it. Have a statement made up and notarized that anything occurring after xyz date you are not responsible for and send it by registered mail with a returned signed receipt to all creditors and any other financial institutions you do or have done transactions with. Anything that you can do to separate yourself from the banking industry is a plus until things get resolved. It is a royal pia. Even with all this there are still going to be difficulties to overcome. Been there. This is the falacy of them using you SS# as Id. Also and I do not know if it is possible, get a new SS#. Think about it for a minute want cable TV, new savings account utilities, and everything else, what is about the third question they ask- yep SS# and if you refuse to supply it they deny service. This isn't right
I was in the army from 1968 until 1971 and at the beginning we were issued ID numbers. By the time I got out, they were using SS numbers for ID, IIRC. Anyone else have this memory of changing military ID numbers to SS numbers?
More things in the news about the Equifax breach: Some Equifax executives sold a bunch of their stock after the breach but before the company went public. There was a critical program patch rolled out 2 months prior to the breach to fix the vulnerability, Equifax did not apply it. A password for their Equador group to access was "admin". If you freeze your credit report at Equifax, look closely at the 'pin' number they supply and compare it to the date, year and time it was generated. And this: Equifax hired a music major as chief security officer and she has just retired If any or all of this is true, OMG.
