What to do if your personal data is stolen

A CNN report about identity theft

They recommend these steps to safeguard your personal info:

• Monitor your accounts for any irregularities over the next few years.
  
• Put a fraud alert on your credit reports.
  
• Order credit reports directly from each credit bureau.
  
• Consider signing up for a credit monitoring service.
  
• Insist on identifiers other than your Social Security number.
  
• Change your bank account numbers.
  
• Change identifiers on your 401(k), life insurance policy and stock-options brokerage account.
  
• Opt out of pre-approved credit offers.
  

Read the full article on CNN

Veterans' Personal Data at Risk

Today’s report that more than 26 million veterans and their spouses may now be exposed to identity theft because a federal employee violated government policy by taking home a computer disk with veterans’ personal information, a disk that was later stolen during a burglary of the employee’s home, threatens to be a headache for many people for a long time.

Perhaps the thief doesn’t realize what he has and has already tossed it and the veterans will dodge the danger of identity theft.
But if the thieves, assuming there was more than one, understand what they have—including names, Social Security numbers, and birthdates—many innocent people could wind up experiencing the nightmare of identity theft.

Full story

Avoiding Common Credit and Debt Scams

About.com offers some good advice jon how to avoid some of the common scams that are running rampant these days.

ID Theft Prevention Bill Clears Senate Floor

Helping people protect themselves from identity theft by giving them the ability to lock and unlock their credit reports in 15 minutes is the goal of SB 1744 by California State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), which passed the full Senate today on a 24-11 vote.

"The security freeze is the only tool that's proven effective in stopping identity thieves in their tracks," said Bowen, who authored California's first-in-the-nation security freeze law in 2001 and a number of the state's other ground-breaking identity theft prevention laws. "When you freeze your credit report, you're safe even if someone gets their hands on your Social Security number because anyone who applies for a car loan, credit card, mortgage, cell phone service, or anything else using your name and Social Security number will run into a brick wall."

Under California law, SB 168 (Bowen) which took effect in 2003, credit reporting agencies must allow people to place a "security freeze" on their credit reports in order to prevent identity theft. People who place a freeze on their credit report can already lift the freeze in order to get, for example, a new loan or credit card, but currently it can take up to three days to lift the freeze. SB 1744 requires credit bureaus to give people the ability to lift a freeze on their credit report within 15 minutes by September 1, 2008. The credit bureaus must already set up systems to do 15-minute lifts for residents of Utah and New Jersey under new laws passed in those states.
Full Article

Congress may gut credit-report protections

A new state law that would allow Floridians to block access to their credit histories could be superseded by one of several federal proposals now working their ways through Congress.

Consumer advocates say one of the federal measures in particular would eviscerate the state 'security-freeze' law, which was designed to protect credit files from identity theft.

If enacted, the federal bill would also nullify Florida's existing 'breach notification' law and similar laws in other states that require companies to notify people when their personal data is stolen or otherwise compromised, critics of the federal measure say.

'It is the worst consumer-data bill ever,' said Ed Mierzwinski, Florida program director for the Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C. 'It not only pre-empts other state laws that make a [security] freeze available to everyone, but its pre-emption is so broad it may prevent other state consumer-protection measures in the future.'

Representatives of the financial-services industry say such reactions are extreme and premature. They say the federal bill in question is only one of many proposals now before Congress, and most of them incorporate many of the protections included in state law.

Full article from the Orlando Sentinel