Think You’ve Got Your Credit Freezes Covered? Think Again
krebsonsecurity.com
krebsonsecurity.com
https://www.nctue.com/consumers
Here are the pages for adding security freezes to the other big four agencies:
https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo...
https://freeze.transunion.com/sf/securityFreeze/landingPage....
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
https://www.innovis.com/securityFreeze/index
Most people don't know about Innovis, which was mentioned in the article. That said, I've never run into a company where I've needed to lift an Innovis freeze. Anyway, I agree that it's tiring to constantly track which data brokers allow (are required to) adding a security freeze. In my opinion, better legislation is needed to curb this activity and data brokers in general.
Seems to be intentionally broken to avoid people freezing.
My niece dropped a programming adjacent class in college because they required them to use real computers "like with keyboards for old people" and she didn't want to learn how to do that.
They're also really good at optimizing for likes on insta, I would argue that is not technical literacy either.
I don't think its a 'kids these days' statement at all. More a 'technology these days'
We don't get action on these things because Congress is fundamentally broken.
I used to laugh at my father-in-law whom I once considered to be a conspiracy theory whackjob with his off-the-grid lifestyle. As more and more of his "crazy" insights turn into New York Times headlines, I'm starting to think he was ahead of the curve.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2013/P3822...
I never pay for anything on the Web. Anything on the net that requires payment, I don't do. (I made an exception for the fees for the stallman.org domain, since that is connected with me anyway.) I also avoid paying with credit cards . For freedom's sake, insist on paying cash. When a business pressures you to pay in an identified way, that means your help as a citizen is needed: say, "If you won't take my cash, no sale!"
A house, you probably will need leverage for, but at least there's a reasonable chance it will appreciate in value.
Debt represents risk that makes all of these other setbacks worse. It's better to get that off your back, then invest. If you have car debt, you should first pay that off, then play the stock market with your surplus money.
My friends who stayed -- car payment and all -- now have far more money than I do. But I was much happier than I would have been, stuck in traffic. It's not for everyone.
That's in a perfect world. In the real world, where people aren't perfectly rational agents, people take out car loans all the time. One can argue that the major US automakers are essentially finance companies these days.
Not an issue for Stallman with his grant from the MacArthur foundation. But much of his advice comes from generalisation of his near-unique circumstances.
The issue, as he explains, is one of tying the purchase to your identity. If it can be avoided, you should use cash. If you have to otherwise identify yourself for other reasons (like when buying an airline ticket, or when buying something which inherently identifies you, like paying for the stallman.org domain), there is no question of avoiding identification, and insisting on cash would be pointless.
Equifax et al don't particularly care if you pay cash, they have some form of record on you either way.
If there is no other identity using this SSN, then the likelihood of the fraudulent activity being dectected is low.
This is why SSNs belonging to elderly people, children/teenagers, and the recently deceased are of relatively higher value for a lot of people out there doing identity fraud.
Synthetic identity fraud involves you making a bunch of inquiries with completely fake SSNs and squatting on them for a few years, maybe bringing them out of cold storage every so often to make a few more inquiries to keep them on the credit-building radar before you ultimately qualify for actual lines of credit and do a bust-out. There is no oblivious meatbag being used as a patsy-- the identities are completely fake, which is what makes them synthetic.
Using a completely fake SSN instead of a stolen SSN is what distinguishes "synthetic identity theft" from "synthetic identity fraud".
The identities in both cases are completely fake, but only in the identity theft case is the synthetic identity backstopped by a legitimate SSN that belongs to a real person somewhere. If that real person is a child or "off the grid", then the CRAs have no idea who the real person is and their SSN is ripe for creating a synthetic identity that will probably go undetected for years.
If you have income and have and pay any recurring bills (even utilities, etc.) you have credit to exploit; it may be a fairly weak credit history, but if you have no substantive debt, you probably also then have a good listed debt-to-income and debt-to-asset ratio, which can (potentially more than) offset that sparse history when opening a new line of credit.
To be not exploitable you either need to be completely invisible to the system or appear so uncreditworthy that no one relying on the system would loan you money at all.
(Of course, personal data leaks from credit tracking DBs can be used for identity fraud for things unrelated to securing credit, too, and being visible but not creditworthy doesn't protect you from that at all.)
I was always told this was true, but I waited for years to finally get a credit card or try to apply for a loan. Everyone informed me I had ZERO credit history, despite paying apartment and utility bills for years. I don't have any explanation for why this is true, except that I started my credit from scratch in my late-20s.
None of the three major bureaus track any of this information, so in practical terms they do not factor into a credit history. Income is not collected by itself and placed on a credit report. It's not a weak credit history but non-existent.
While that should be the case, unfortunately, that's not true. And it may make you less likely to notice if someone does in your name.
* Lack of history makes successful applications less likely
* Lack of history makes fraud stand out, any activity is fraud
* Since fraud has been identity theft, meaning I have to bitch-and-moan, lack of utilization of credit lends to a stronger story which can help convince folks whereas a serial debtor makes for a less sympathetic and less convincing victim.
Additionally, you have less risk of compromise:
* That website can't leak my CC details
* That skimmer can't capture my CC details
* That waiter[0] can't clone my card
I went full-cash, even paying for a utilities-included apartment. It also seems to cause me to keep a bit better track of my spending. Easier to overspend when your balance is a number in the cloud somewhere.
[0] - Depends on country, e.g. the US frequently has waitstaff take your card to a terminal
Additionally, it's possible for cards to get locked and that's a PITA to deal with, and god forbid it takes more than a moment to unlock. Hope you have backup cash.
Personally, I'd rather deal with the known hassle (cash) vs. the unknown future hassle (card).
In Europe you have a 24hr window to catch the fraud. Afterwards you assume all liability.
It relates to the article in the following obvious way. A freeze on running a credit report means that someone cannot run your credit report. Without the ability to run your credit report, someone cannot discover your existing accounts, limits, addresses, and balances by running your credit report.
You also wrote: Equifax et al don't particularly care if you pay cash, they have some form of record on you either way.
This is not correct. Equifax and the other bureaus do not have a record of you on a credit report if you always pay cash and never apply for or run a credit report.
[1] even apartments. And utilities will require an additional deposit.
Usually, the person whose identity is stolen is the victin.
> The companies and government agencies that allowed themselves to be defrauded by someone posing as me are the victims.
They are also victims, but until you—often at considerable personal effort—have gotten all the debts and other bad marks by the fraudster dissociated from your identity, you are disadvantaged by it, and if you are disadvantaged or have had to pay a cost to escape that disadvantage, you are a victim, too.
You seem to be misunderstanding the point badly--the situation you have described is nonsense.
Firstly, what do we mean by "having your identity stolen"? I submit that this is not an attack on me as a person, it is an attack on a fictional representation of me held by a conglomerate of corporations.
This is the point of OP: I am not involved in these transactions! I haven't committed a crime, purchased anything, or interacted with either the party who has defrauded this conglomerate nor this conglomerate. In fact, due to the way this information is collected and stored, I may not have ever had any direct relationship to either party.
So what's happened here is that a conglomerate of companies have been defrauded and now insist that I am to make amends for it. It's nonsensical, and no amount of repeating the facts of the current situation will make it anything but ridiculous.
If only that were true.
In case it wasn't clear, I certainly support Shivetya's excellent suggestion to improve society for humans who live in it. I'm just not as optimistic about personal lobbying as you are.
Large fines for banks and companies that libel people by telling information brokers lies is the way to stop this problem. The idea that when this happens it is "identity theft" and the person whose identity was stolen is responsible for the problem is ridiculous. This problem should be called libel and the perpetrators (the entity reporting false info that hurts you) punished.
Second, making giving and getting credit harder to do is probably a good thing for society. Do people really need to take out a half million dollar home loan from their phone a la Rocket Mortgage? Many cultures had/have very strict rules about charging interest on loans. Debt jubilees were common in past civilizations and seem necessary to prevent the masses from creating their own via revolution. Making personal loans illegal and bringing back the loan shark is not the way to go, but making going into debt to buy consumptive goods much harder would be big positive for most people in the US.
Like you said, there is a huge amount of money and power behind easy lending, so change seems unlikely. On the other hand, change seems to be in the air these days, so maybe one can afford a bit of hope.
Wouldn't it be the opposite? It would be the creditors which would have to defend themselves in court. In my country, moral damages are nearly guaranteed in these cases, and the burden of proof is on the creditors to prove the debt is valid.
When Equifax repeats those lies to other potential creditors, they're also failing, but at root the misinformation originates with the creditor who failed to properly authenticate their customer.
[+] Technically the burden of proof is on the creditor but victim has to continue to reach out to insist on such proof. If they do not expend extraordinary efforts to do so the record is against them.
Big incoherent rant incoming:
In 2016 someone stole my identity and in about a 1 month period took out tens of credit cards and new bank accounts and phone account which they immediately over drafted. They somehow managed to change the address in my credit file, and so I wasn't getting any failure to pay notices. At the same time it was quite soon I found out because at least one creditor managed to find my real address asking about a 18,000 loan approval for furniture from The Brick. The police were easy enough to deal with and took a report and I had to use this to prove to creditors it was fraud.
I had Equifax do their own investigation, and they agreed it was fraud, but they only removed the creditors who happened to appear on file during their investigation.
A year past, and I check my credit and it was 799, all clear. Then last fall I get a call from a creditor saying I owe them money, they required I go to their bank to fill out the paperwork. One more cleared. Then in February I'm hearing from yet another bank about an overdraft account. Once again I proved to them it was fraud by providing the police report number. "Ok, well it will take us 30-45 days to remove this from your credit file". Its coming up to 45 days and its still there. I called them to clarify about when it will be removed, and get the same bs. I do not believe their word so I have also sent another dispute to equifax. MY MORTGAGE RENEWAL IS DUE JUNE 1 AND THIS SHIT HAS STOPPED ME FROM MOVING MORTGAGE PROVIDERS TO GET A BETTER RATE.
Now during this latest fiasco, I do another credit check and discover ANOTHER phone company on there says I have a bad debt with them and a note that a collections agency is after me. I succeed in having this removed from my credit file after dealing with Equifax, but for reasons beyond me they did not remove the one from the bank I am disputing in the previous paragraph, so I have to hope it will clear when they way it will (30-45 days from early April), or hope my second dispute works. Note that these latest bad debts are still originating from 2016, its just taken the banks that long to pin the blame on me and attack my credit file.
So this has been a lot of stress on me, I have failed to secure a new mortgage lender which will cost me in interest over the next 3 years on mortgage payments. In addition, I just discovered my TransUnion file is still a giant mess with shit from last fall on it. Apparently Trans Union and Equifax don't synchronize.
Long story short, there isn't shit you can do to speed up anyone helping you. The police are competent and will have your back but they can't stop creditors from attacking your file. Equifax is slow and not thorough in their investigations and make themselves hard to reach. The banks can pin a bad debt on anyone they chose, never mind that the onus should be on them to prove I took out the loans they claim. Like, show me a signature, show me the ID used to get the loan... Oh its fake? Then fuck off. Nope, they will make you jump hoops to prove it isn't you, and then the cherry on top is they will be very very slow to do anything to remove it off your credit file once you have in fact proven its not you.
Good luck to all of you, you are all vulnerable to this shit.
Seems like it would be very easy to demonstrate damages.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 (“FCRA”) is U.S. Federal Government legislation enacted to promote the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of consumer information contained in the files of consumer reporting agencies. It was intended to protect consumers from the willful and/or negligent inclusion of inaccurate information in their credit reports
Of course, Trump and his appointees wants to dismantle CFPB which helps protect consumers on these kind of things.
https://www.exchangeservicecenter.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_Persona...
Thanks.