Protecting Your Identity

To the Editor:

In the February 21, 2008, edition of The Bee was an article entitled “Putting the Freeze on Identity Theft.” In this article, Attorney Paul Lux advises his clients to freeze their credit reports in order to protect themselves. He states: “...they do not have to fear identity theft ever again.”

While freezing your credit report is a very good idea, it is not a panacea for all of your potential exposure to identity theft. There is nothing to prevent a clerk at a retail store from taking a copy of your credit card and personal information and buying things online or over the phone. Your Social Security number is not needed, and a purchase of several hundreds or thousands of dollars can be made and sent to someone as a “gift” before you even know the credit card has been used.

You are also exposed when someone hacks into a bank or retail company and steals your identity along with ten thousand other peoples’.

And ultimately, there are companies hired by the federal government to collect and retain personal information on taxpayers, like their driver’s license number and Social Security number.

One such company is ChoicePoint; they not only collect your personal information, but they actually sell some of it to people who want to run background checks. While they cannot sell your Social Security number, they can and do sell things like your name, address, phone number, and previous residence information.

So, by all means put a freeze on your credit reports, but don’t become complacent that you are perfectly safe. You are not. Vigilance and awareness are key to protecting your credit.

Shred or otherwise totally destroy any mail that has your personal information; names and addresses and other personal information can be stolen from discarded mail. Also check your credit card statements every month to make sure there are no purchases on it that you haven’t made yourself.

Protect yourself; no one else will really do it for you.

Dan Tannenbaum

Co-Founder and Former Owner of Newtown Computer Services

17118 Tortoise Street, Round Rock, Texas               March 10, 2008