Featured Member
Laurence Hansen, Small Business and Group Benefits Specialist,
Pre-Paid Legal Services®, Inc.
 Identity Theft Prevention...and Other Modern Myths
We’ve seen the television ads: women talking with male voices and children talking with adult voices. Some of them are pretty funny and their message seems to be that the big national bank has your best interest at heart. But reality is a lot more sobering.
We’ve read about it in the news. One person’s stolen social security number is used by dozens of people for employment in nearly twenty states. The victim spends hundreds of hours standing in line and on the phone to clear things up with the IRS, Social Security Administration and other agencies. Another person’s identity is used to obtain medical services fraudulently. The victim’s medical records are now a mess and the identity thief’s medical information is mixed in with that of the victim.
Between advertising that presents a simplistic view of identity theft and the occasional news story showing the darker, more serious reality of identity theft, it’s hard to sort out fact from fiction. We tend to lose sight of how we can be affected personally. Even with more and more news reports of serious identity theft cases, many people still believe they can deal with identity theft on their own.
There are a multitude of myths and misunderstandings about identity theft. I’ll briefly touch on three very prominent myths, show what the reality is behind them and describe the key elements of identity theft protection that everyone needs today.
Myth: Identity theft can be prevented.
Many people believe they can prevent their identity from being stolen by exercising caution in how they release their personal information. One prominent advertiser would have us believe that their service can prevent identity theft, even to the point of promoting their service “guarantee.”
Reality: Identity theft is beyond your and my control.
We do need to take responsibility for our personal information whenever and wherever we have control of it. We need to take appropriate precautions like shredding anything that has our name, address and/or other personal or account information before letting it out of our control. But even being as careful as we can be individually, there is nothing we can do about the vast amount of personal information that is in the hands of creditors, banks and other financial institutions, medical and dental offices, current and former employers, current and former schools, colleges and universities, military databases, DMV databases, etc. The list goes on and on.
Even your pet’s veterinary clinic may hold enough information about you for an identity thief to create a fraudulent driver’s license or gain employment using your identity.
The reality is that we don’t have control of the information that identifies us in the multitude of databases that “know” us and are beyond our reach.
Myth: Identity theft is only about credit cards.
If it were true that identity theft only consists of credit card fraud, there wouldn’t be much cause for concern. All you’d need to do is carefully review your monthly statements, notify your credit card company of any fraudulent transactions, possibly file a police report and probably close a compromised account and open a new account to replace it. It would be annoying and inconvenient but not life-altering.
Reality: Identity theft is not only about credit cards. Identity theft can involve mortgages and other financial accounts, utility accounts, your social security and tax records, your medical records, your DMV record and potentially criminal records tied to your identity.
As stated earlier, many recent news reports have made it clear that there is more to our identity than just our credit card accounts.
Myth: You can’t lose money as a result of identity theft.
This one is related to the myth that identity theft is only about credit cards.
Reality: You may be held responsible for any financial obligations created using your identity until you can prove that you are not in fact the responsible person. According to the FTC, an identity theft victim can spend up to 600 hours and up to $1500 to clear up an identity theft situation.
The obligations you may be held responsible for can include hospital and doctor bills, federal and state taxes, loans created in states you’ve never even visited and more. The process of proving that you are not responsible can be complicated and typically requires the assistance of a competent lawyer. Much of the work required to clean up after identity theft must be done during regular business hours so it will require you to take time away from the job.
The bottom line is this: Today’s complicated business and financial environment demand identity theft protection that will reduce the time, stress and expense involved in restoring your identity.
Credit monitoring by itself is not enough. It’s a required part of an overall identity theft solution but it won’t do anything to help once you find that your identity has been stolen.
Identity theft “insurance” is not an adequate solution. It provides no early-warning system like credit monitoring. Unlike what we’ve come to expect from our homeowner’s and automobile policies, identity theft “insurance” does not pay in advance for the services you need to restore your identity.
The most effective response to identity theft includes three key features: (1) credit monitoring for early detection of identity theft, (2) identity restoration performed by licensed investigators and (3) ready access to legal assistance.
According to Michael McCoy and Steffen Schmidt, PhD in their book The Silent Crime, “Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc’s two tiered solution, Life Events Legal PlanSM and the Legal Shield combined with the Identity Theft Shield seems to be the next step in the evolution of identity theft services. Pre-Paid Legal Services has access to top ranked attorneys within a closed network giving its members access before, during and after becoming victims of identity theft, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In our opinion and in the opinion of many of our colleagues and other experts, this is the direction in which the entire industry must move.“
For more information about these and other services from Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc., go to http://www.LaurenceHansen.com.
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