- HOW DOES YOUR MONITORING SERVICE WORK? “Our proprietary Early Alert, Identity Monitoring system searches hundreds of data sources looking for changes in key information…such as your address….. that would indicate a possible identity theft. If we see an address change, we place a personal call to you to determine if you changed your address….or if someone else initiated the change. You may have initiated the change by moving or sending a bill to another address of yours. If you did initiate the change, then we update your file. If you did not initiate the change, then it could be the beginning of an ID theft.” And ….then we provide you with the steps you need to take to protect your identity.
- WHY IS THE ADDRESS THE KEY? The most severe form of identity theft is “identity assumption”. This is the crime in which a thief gets your SS# and opens multiple financial accounts that you don’t know about…or commits other non-financial id thefts such as committing crimes in your name or IRS fraud. In order to delay you finding out about these new bogus accounts, the thief gives the lender an address and telephone number that you don’t know about. The bills for these new bogus accounts are sent to the thief’s address and not yours. It typically it takes victims 9 months or longer to discover this type of crime and up to 44 months for one to repair their identity without the proper protection.
- DOES YOUR SYSTEM PROTECT MY CURRENT ACCOUNTS? Generally No. The true identity thief is not interested in your current accounts… he is interested in setting up new accounts that you do not know about. This type of crime is really credit card fraud. Either your card issuer’s internal security system or you when you receive your bill will catch the crime quickly. Your credit card issuer will remove those charges from your statement with little damage to you.
- WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY NON-FINANCIAL SUCH AS IRS FRAUD? An example of IRS fraud is the widely reported case of Audra Schmierer from the San Francisco area. Audra had not worked in years but yet she received a bill from the IRS stating that she owed $15,000 from a job that she had worked in Texas four years earlier. Of course she didn’t work that job. Someone had used her number to get a job leaving Audra with the IRS debt. The investigation further discovered that her SS# had been used in 17 states by 81 different people. In fact, one of the thieves purchased her number at a flee market.
- WHAT KIND OF DATA SOURCES DO YOU MONITOR? We look at a broad range of both financial and non-financial. Some examples: are the three credit bureaus, cell phone records, white and yellow pages, insurance groups, subscriptions, financial institutions, and real property records.
- WHEN YOU MONITOR THE CREDIT BUREAUS, ARE YOU MONITORING MY CREDIT OR MY CURRENT ACCOUNTS? No. We are looking at the address on these reports…which is the key to identity theft. The bureaus are only one type of the hundreds of sources that we use.
- IS THIS CREDIT MONITORING? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? No. Credit Monitoring looks at credit. Early Alert watches hundreds of financial and non-financial data sources looking for the key to identity theft…which according to law enforcement is the address.
- MY CREDIT MONITORING SERVICE SAYS THAT THEY MONITOR ADDRESS CHANGES AS WELL. WHY IS YOURS BETTER? The credit bureaus are only looking at the address they have while we look at hundreds of different financial and non-financial sources to compare the different sources to determine if there truly has been a change or is there an error in the data. Also, it was reported by the Federal Reserve that an independent study group determined that up to 79% of credit reports have some type of errors.
- IS THERE A GUARANTEE THAT MY IDENTITY WILL NOT BE STOLEN? No one can guarantee that. However, Early Alert was designed to catch an id theft early or before it happens. The key to limiting your damage is to take the proper steps after you become aware that there is a potential theft. If you discover it within the first 30 days, the FTC estimates that it takes about 10 hours to repair your identity. If you catch it later, it can take up to 300 hours and 44 months to fix.
- HOW DOES YOUR SERVICE WORK WITHOUT SS #? Privacy Solutions’ technical and legal team’s experience in background screening and data analytics goes back 16 years. That experience helped them develop this unique service.
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