Goodbye Identity Theft. This course will make you tangibly safer from ID Theft today than you were yesterday.

Identity theft is a huge problem, but a bigger problem is how little responsibility the large data brokers and perpetrators of negligent breaches are doing about it. Though you didn't ask to be put at risk, companies profit from credit and data-sharing practices and aren't motivated to put you first.

For the past 13 years, I've written articles, done podcasts, consulted, spoken at conferences, and tried to raise awareness in any way I can. Now, I've put together an online course containing the experiences of more than a decade of ID Theft education. I've watched the rise of the "monitoring services" and insurance scams and "dark web scanning" nonsense and now, I will show you how to apply valid risk-analysis (in an easy-to-understand way) to determine if you are throwing your money away on "security theater".

Most importantly, I will give you solid tips, tricks, and strategies for actually protecting your information based operations risk assessment skills cultivated from more than a decade of working for the Department of Defense. That combined with making you aware of your legal right to force credit reporting companies to stop selling your data to anyone they please (creditors and ID Thieves alike) make this one of the best classes you will ever take.

I will give you information that will make you tangibly safer from ID Theft today than you were yesterday. Click here to see pricing.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Scenario: A drug dealer gets a cellphone to make drug deals. They sign a lease in your name, hook up electricity, and then go shopping for supplies all in your name. What do all of these have in common? Each of these requires a credit check.

A credit check for the phone, a credit check for the lease, another for the utilities, and the last for the store's credit account. The real problem with identity theft isn't the thieves (who have always been there), it's the system that makes it so easy for them to get goods and services while leaving you with the bill.

It's not thieves or breaches or some mysterious unsolvable problem; CRCs directly caused the ID Theft epidemic by positioning themselves as the gateway to all credit decisions and then freely handing out your information with insufficient controls.

The Solution

I already explained the various types of non-credit ID Theft, but the vast majority of instances do involve a credit check which simplifies the problem: block the check, block the theft. I won't bore you with the long and bitter war with the CRCs with us trying to get freezes available and them trying to block laws and discourage people from using them. Bottom line, since 2018, freezes are free in all US states.

Here's why you should care:

What if someone was actually protecting your credit report from unauthorized access? Better yet, what if that person could be YOU? Freezes make it happen

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Freezing Your Credit Reports

1. Go to the three CRC's freeze pages online (they keep changing the URLs so check the FTC's page for an up-to-date list or register a complaint while you're there if they changed them again).
2. Enter your data, but NOT your credit card or other payment information.
3. Watch out for upsells and addons as they trying to use the freeze system to milk you for monitoring or other "services".
4. Make sure you have a freeze PIN or they notify you it's coming in the mail (but make sure you actually GET it).

Boom, you win.

What's the big deal? It used to be I only needed a little bit of your information to pretend to be you and get credit, but with a Freeze PIN in place, now there's an extra piece of required data… something only YOU and the CRC have. If you're doing it right, you'll store the PIN securely and NEVER allow any store or creditor to "thaw your credit for you if you just give them the PIN". Instead, do the following:

Thawing Your Report

Time Based

1. Contact the CRC by phone or through their website.
2. Provide the freeze PIN along with a date range

Once complete, access to your credit report is open for the time period you specified. Granted, this means you're totally exposed during that time, but it's still a small window of time for thieves and is the most effective way to handle several different companies need access to your credit report at once (like if you're going loan shopping or moving into a new place and need to let several people check your credit in sequence).

Company Based

1. Contact the CRC by phone or through their website.
2. Provide the freeze PIN along with the name of a company.
3. Note the temporary PIN they provide you.
4. Give the temporary PIN to the company that you're applying for credit with.

When you apply for something that requires a credit check, ask them which CRC they use so you can thaw the right one. There's no sense taking the time and trouble to thaw more than you need to.

Drawbacks

Freezes DO NOT affect existing credit accounts or credit cards. Only new applications for credit that require a CRC check.

There is only one drawback that I know of: having a credit freeze will naturally introduce a delay when getting credit. If you are the type to apply for instant-credit deals, you might find this to be cumbersome. Similarly, if you have a pressing need to get credit (car broke down or something) delays can be a problem. The CRCs are supposed to unfreeze your credit within an hour of making the request online, but I've had some trouble getting them to approve the thaw this way due to (in my opinion) shenanigans (thanks Equifax… you scumbags).

The CRCs are supposed to make thaws easy. If you think they're making it harder than it should be (purposefully or incompetently), file a complaint at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Pros

• You get to control who sees your credit report. Outside of a small set of exceptions credit report access will be blocked until and unless you proactively unlock it first.
• In some (all?) cases, attempts to access your frozen credit will generate email or mail alerts. So much for paying for monitoring.
• Having a little cool-down time to rethink getting into more debt isn't such a bad thing.
• They do not affect any existing credit accounts or credit cards in any way (only NEW credit applications that require a credit check). In fact, there are robust protection laws to keep you safe when using credit cards. This is unrelated to freezes, but still cool so check it out!

Still, this is balanced by the incredible protection of actually having control over who sees your credit.having a little time to actually think before adding to your debt really can't be such a bad thing.

Exercise

Exercise by Nick Youngson - Alpha Stock Images

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

Ready to get your money's worth?

Freeze your credit reports!

Do it. Do it now. It's free as of 2018 and it actually helps to prevent ID theft. (this link goes to the FTC article on freezes and links to each of the three websites and gives phone numbers in case the websites aren't working for some reason).

Each company will try to steer you into some kind of monitoring, credit score, or service plan that will allow them to keep making money on you. Make sure you don't fall for it. You should be able to get through the whole process without pulling out your credit card. If not, you probably took a wrong turn somewhere, so go back and try again.

Now, if you are currently paying for some kind of monitoring or protection service, take your notes from the exercises in the previous lessons and go down the list of "features" for your service. As yourself whether the "feature" still makes sense now that you have freeze in place. Let me help you get started:

• How many people do you know who were victims of ID Theft? How many of those were NON-credit ID theft?
• If your experience matches mine and you've rarely heard of anyone who suffered ID theft that didn't require a credit report, ask yourself: what are my odds of ID theft really now that my credit reports are properly locked?
• If your risk has been significantly reduced, does paying $10, $20, or more a month for insurance or monitoring still make sense?

And so on… Bottom line, you have to make your own decisions and determine if you're happy with what you pay for what you get. But even if you decide to keep paying, the freeze made you more secure today than you were yesterday so your final exercise for this section:

Send this link to at least one other person, but preferably everyone you know: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs#place. Tell them that it's a free and legally-mandated right to protect your credit reports the way we should have been able to from the beginning.

The Bad News

Bottom line, ID Theft is a low risk crime with only two steps:

1. Get someone's data
2. Use the data

Now I have goods, services, and special accesses, but you get all the consequences. Worst of all, government entities responsible for protecting you don't and companies make more money on ID Theft than they lose. There's no one looking out for you; you're on your own.

The Good News

Until now, you've been given incomplete or bad advice for how to respond to ID Theft risks, but that changes today. I will give you the bottom-line basics you need to make informed decisions; i.e., which defenses actually work and which are just snake oil pitched by ID Theft profiteers.

Let's get started!

Learning styles vary greatly so the material is available in two formats: video and text. The videos are intended as a high-level overview for covering ground quickly while the text version will have numerous inline references to sources and examples to give you a deeper understanding the the material. Use either or both to learn the material in the way that works for you!

This is a free online course. To get started, ID Theft - The Straight Basics

(Image is in the Public Domain)

I was given the opportunity to give a five minute talk on any topic of my choice relating to computers, freedom, or privacy preceding the conference dinner on Wednesday. Narrowing down all the things I would want to say was difficult at first, but of course had to be nothing other than credit freezes.

It drives me nuts that there's still so few people that know about this very important tool and I made sure that at least my fellow computer, freedom, and privacy advocates and peers would know. It turns out that there were many who hadn't heard of it before. After my talk, I had many people come to ask me about more details or to tell me that they spread the word to their friends and family. One even invited me to come speak at his church at a large event he's hosting in the fall!

It's a good start.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

South Carolina's Governor just signed into law a bill that gives SC residents the ability to freeze their credit for free!

And of course there's always this:

The credit reporting industry has opposed such legislation relating to credit report freezes. One concern is that too many states will have different regulations, which would make it difficult for credit reporting bureaus to comply. That's a good argument, and it's why this issue needs to be addressed at the federal level. In the meantime, South Carolina was right to take action on the state level.

Imagine that! Different states have different laws! Oh wah wah, cry me a freaking river! If they wanted to do business in Mexico or Canada, do you think there might be some different laws? It's not as if there aren't companies who do business in tons of different countries in the world successfully despite all the different laws and customs.

This is such a bogus argument, I'm going to have to try to remember not to even bother getting worked up about it anymore.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Though the credit reporting companies scrambled to allow freezes in all states most likely to prevent each state from enacting their own laws with lower fees and more restrictions than they wanted, many states are still pursuing their own legislation (as they should).

Georgia's proposed law would allow freezes for only $3 and would automatically be free for anyone 65 and up (the first state I've heard of to have such a provision). Though it's not law yet, this is one of the better ones I've seen.

Arizona is also busy on a credit freeze law, but I wasn't able to find any details on how well their law is written.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Rather than preventing the problem, many companies are satisfied (and make tons of profit) by inventing new services to attack the symptoms rather than the problem.

Don't waste your time or money. Get a credit freeze and don't worry about all the snake oil.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Consumeraffairs is now reporting that the last credit reporting company, Experian, will now be offering credit freezes in all 50 states, just like the other two.

Credit freezes have always been the quickest, strongest, and most effective way to reduce identity theft. And while this is true:

All three credit bureaus had staunchly opposed credit freezes in the past, claiming the practice would harm consumers seeking credit and slow down industries that depend on instant access to credit.

If you've been reading how instant credit is destroying lives and burying people under mountains of debt they can't handle, this doesn't seem like a problem at all.

Anyway, they're not all in effect yet and I think that further legislation would be good to make sure that these companies don't worsen the deal over time, but it's a damn good start.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Here's a fairly good checklist for what to do if you're a victim of identity theft.

The only problem is that he didn't mention the most effective tool for preventing ID theft that there is: Credit Security Freezes. If you live in a state that has a freeze law, don't wait until you're a victim, do it now!