|
Last week, my previous health insurance company (Health Net) notified us in writing that our personal information was compromised by their IT service provider (IBM) and offered us two years of credit report monitoring provided by Debix about which I will soon write a service review. The question we have to pose ourselves is how often is our personal information lost or stolen by businesses without our knowledge? My guess is that our information is more exposed to identity theft risks by third parties than we can think or believe. This assumption should guide the need for our continuous identity monitoring, however, sound identity protection doesn’t need to cost a huge amount of money and credit monitoring alone is not the complete solution to identity theft. We must take advantage of every law and cost effective option to protect our identities including fraud alert placement, obtaining and reviewing free credit reports and setting up account alerts. An article was recently published on our blog about free ways to protect our identities which provides further details. Click here to read the article. I welcome your suggestions for future article topics. Our goal is to provide relevant, easy to understand and valuable information about identity protection which our members can use. Please use this form to send us your suggestions. Also, please visit Identity Management Institute for individual or group training and certifications at www.theimi.org. Recent Articles Product Tampering Risks - Using over the counter products or public products such as soap and shampoo at the gyms or hotels can pose a serious product tampering risks due to unauthorized and illegal modifications. Fair Debt Collection Act - When consumers face collection activities by their creditors, there are debt collection laws to preserve consumer rights and fair collection practices. Risk Management Certification - There are many risk management certification options in the marketplace. Some are general while others are more specific in nature which may be selectively combined for full risk management coverage. Until next time, be identity safe, |