Practical Steps to Combat Identity Theft

We all know that we live in a fallen world, and many trusted companies with which we do business are breached on a regular basis.

Take, for example, the recent information security breach experienced by Anthem.  While no credit card information was stolen, cyber attackers accessed the personal details of as many as 80 million Anthem members, including children.

While credit monitoring is frequently suggested, using a monitoring service alone will only help you recognize that you've been impacted after it's too late. Authors and financial advisors who suggest credit monitoring mean well, but many have never experienced identity theft themselves.

Below is a story of just how impactful identity theft can be.

Rhett's Story

Rhett Saunders, a Compassion International employee, has experienced identity theft personally and even lost his father due to the emotional toll that came with it.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." — John 10:10 (NIV)

What have I learned from my experience with identity theft?

Credit reports are exposed and accessible for any identity thief to steal. Currently, our society places greater value on convenience than privacy. Because of this, many U.S. companies have less strict controls than other countries.

One thing I know for certain is that protecting yourself against identity theft cannot be done alone — and there are many precautions you can take. When trying to recover from identity theft in the U.S., we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Over the years, after trying to help my father in 2010, I learned four essential steps that will lessen or stop identity theft before it starts.

Four Essential Steps

STEP 1: Get identity theft insurance today.

Zander Insurance: $12.90 per month for the whole family to be covered.

STEP 2: Get a permanent security freeze on your credit reports.

Place a permanent security freeze on all credit bureaus, if you are in a season of not getting out new loans and new credit cards. This has to be done separately for each of the three credit bureaus. This will cost approximately $10 each to lock and $10 every time you need to perform a temporary lift to allow a creditor to request your credit. This will not impact your current credit cards, mortgage or credit rating. It only impacts the ability to get new credit and prevents anyone from looking at or altering your credit.

Suggested resources:

• Equifax Permanent Security Freeze Page
• Experian Permanent Security Freeze Page
• TransUnion Permanent Security Freeze Page

STEP 3: Create your own real-time monitoring.

I would also recommend that if you have any credit or debit cards (checking account, etc.), to log in to your bank or credit union websites and ensure that you set notifications to either email or text you regarding suspicious activity or when a payment is made without the card present. Think about adding thresholds as well. For example, if you typically only withdraw amounts less than $100, then place a threshold alert to email or text you on anything withdrawn above $100.

STEP 4: Get a password manager.

Download your software of choice for managing passwords, such as KeePass or LastPass. Set your passwords to the maximum complexity on each website and ensure they are all different. This protects against thieves finding out one of your passwords and using it to attack on other websites. Of course, immediately change your password with any company with which you are currently doing business that you're aware has been breached, such as Anthem.

Please be aware that this is not a comprehensive list — but the most important is the identity theft insurance. The second most important resource is the credit freeze because this will stop identity thieves dead in their tracks.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

If this article just helps just one person, then that is a hat-tip to my late father, Mark Saunders. Dad, I think of you often and love you!

The September Distress Signal

Since the kickoff of this site and topic, I recognize there has been no real substance – until now.  Right now, I am attending the 2013 Gartner Risk and Security Summit conference held in National Harbor, Maryland.  At the same time, my hometown in being threatened by new fires in the Colorado Springs, CO area and right now my family is under a volunteer evacuation and is packed up and at a friend’s house for now.  Some of my co-worker's homes and a friend's business are already lost and the probability for containment as of this blog is still low.   Please keep my family and everyone in the Colorado area, in your thoughts and prayers.

Now, back to the purpose of this blog.  Rewind nearly three years from the time this blog is written and it was September 19th, 2010.  I was attending yet another conference in Abilene, Texas at this time and learning about how to secure virtual computing -- if there is such a thing, but that’s a different story.  

I called my father while in the hotel to catch-up.  During typical calls we would discuss a variety of topics that would span in a single call that are considered faux pas in some circles:  politics, finances and religion.  You would think on these topics alone, where my father and I were at odds, we would be pushing each other further away from each other; however, the opposite was actually true.  We were actually getting closer finding common ground on such abstract ideas. 

However, on this particular day, something was wrong and I could hear and sense it in my father’s voice, over 1,500 miles away.  You see, I was in Texas and my father was in Maryland and all we had was the phone to maintain a relationship.  After some initial conversation, my father started in with, “I am not doing well,” and I could tell through an awkward pause and this sentence alone spoken in a voice of desperation.  A voice that I don’t believe I have ever heard from my father, who has always been the strong one in the family that I looked up to and thought of when I was having a tough day.  I would just replay in my mind, like a recording, some of his snappy sayings I knew he would say as I grew up, “just grin and bear it son,” followed by, “don’t be a wuss.”  Yes, some oldies but goodies.   My father just turned 57 in July 2010 and always shared how he was ready to retire soon.  A description of my father: committed, loyal and hard-working blue collar worker, who put in the overtime and was just trying to make ends meet so he could retire on something comfortable.

At first he played down his situation by saying that he is working on sorting things out with home life and that something right now commanded his attention.  That’s when he shared with me that he was on the phone for the last several hours with his bank which [the bank] explained to my father that he was a victim of this #1 growing white color crime known as identity theft.  Then there was a long and awkward pause and then I chimed in with how sorry I was for him and that my role in the work place is to help prevent this sort of thing from happening and that I can help.  My father expressed some interest in my help, but his attention immediately focused back on describing the situation to me, the piles of mail he had already received from credit card companies and the phone calls from the collection agencies hounding him and saying he owed them thousands of dollars.  I could tell he was now upset and frantic just talking about it.  Even I felt upset and frantic for him.  Immediately I thought of how my father barely knew how to use a mouse and a computer, so how was his identity stolen.  In other words, he did not have an online presence.  I also knew that my father never owned a credit card in his life and always had “Triple A Credit." 

Based on the credit part, all that would change and not for the better.  My father's good name and credit was ruined in an instant.  What I did not know was that this had been going on for a while and my father was trying to deal with this as best he knew he could.  For a couple months now, my father did not know where to go or who to even talk to and later I would learn that he even felt embarrassed to share with others about feeling “out of control” in his life.  My father just wanted it to go away, because he felt that he was wrongly accused similar to that of a victim being framed for a crime one did not commit and if our justice system is fair, then it should go away.  I explained to my father, it was up to him to clear his good name and that I could help him every step of the way.  What I would learn through my father later, is [and still is] a broken and fractured system where you are truly guilty until proven innocent.

Fast forward to present day, and I was just meeting with my grandparents (my father’s parents) over dinner and they shared the story of how they were helping him to overcome this identity theft by going with him to the DMV, for moral support.   My father had been instructed by the police department to change his driver’s license to a new one in order to receive a new license number.  This was during the two month timeframe leading up to that phone call exchange I had with my father in Abilene, Texas.  My grandparents shared that when my father walked up to the DMV counter after waiting so patiently, as we all do, after a quick look at his paperwork by the DMV employee, he was immediately told that he did not have the proper paperwork from the police station, and that he needed to go back to the police station and get the proper forms.  Unfortunately, because this had such an emotional impact on my father he stormed away from the DMV employee and my grandparents, which at first seemed angrily toward them.  My grandparents stopped him and asked why he was sort of stomping off like a little kid and when he turned his head slightly with his back turned and head and shoulders down, he said, “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” and that’s when they shared they could see the tears streaming down the side of his face.  

Preamble

In a world that is always on with our personal information flowing freely through cyber space, is ignorance blissful anymore?  Information about you, a loved one, a close friend, whether we wanted it there or not or whether we are aware it is there or not, how do I know or how will I know it is protected?  Unfortunately for some (and near and dear to me), many people find out the very hard way. 

In the course of the coming weeks and months, I intend to blog about my personal story and struggles against something that is just not right.  As I unpack my personal story providing lessons learned and practical tips along the way, these tips, if employed, could save your's, a loved one's or a close friend's life.