Bad Credit Blog

Our office received the following memorandum this morning from a major news source that we subscribe to.  They recommended that we pass it along to everyone who reads our blog.

As you read the following remember… this basic rule always applies: Do NOT give any personal information over the phone if you did not at least initiate the call.

Jury Duty Scam
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below). Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book. It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call.

Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo; your identity was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma , Illinois , and Colorado . This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Now aside from the obvious what can you do should you get one of these calls? If you are a member of LifeLock, you can relax because your identification is well protected. No one can steal it, and that is backed up with a million dollar guarantee.

Here is what LifeLock Offers You For Only $10 per Month!

• Proactive Identity Theft Protection
• Reduce Junk Mail
• Reduce Credit Card Offers
• $1 Million Service Guarantee

If ever you lose your wallet (or it’s stolen), just give them a call. They will transfer you to a certified Recovery Specialist that will help you:

• Identify your missing documents
• Contact each credit, bank or document issuing company while you’re on the phone
• Cancel the lost cards, licenses and documents (including your credit/debit cards, driver’s licenses, social security cards, insurance cards, passports, checkbooks and travelers checks*)
• Fill out the paperwork and request new replacements
• Initiate the fraud affidavit and police reports if the wallet was stolen
• Depending on the severity of the situation, additional follow-up and resolution calls will be arranged.

In many cases, they will be able to replace all of your documents for you. *However, some states require you to be involved with us directly. If this happens, we’ll make it as easy as possible by filling out the necessary forms ahead of time and setting appointments at your convenience - all you have to do is show up.

Think about it. If identity theft is so rampant that the FBI is posting articles about it, why have you NOT signed up for LifeLock yet? Don’t think because you have bad credit nobody will want your identity! Bad or good credit someone can still set up bank accounts and get credit cards in your name. And after they ruin your credit you’ll be stuck trying to fix the mess!

Source:

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

Came across this article today in the Washington Post online. Now, keep in mind that for just about .30 cents a day you can protect your identity – with a million dollar guarantee that it won’t be stolen – with Lifelock. And please tell us if you seriously think it’s not worth the money! Read on . . .

Justice Breyer Is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing

By Brian Krebs
washingtonPost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008; A01

Sometime late last year, an employee of a McLean investment firm decided to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner Resource Group, to the public.

That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of the firm’s clients, including a number of high-powered lawyers and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

The breach was not discovered for nearly six months. A reader of washingtonpost.com’s Security Fix blog found the information while searching LimeWire in June.

Services such as LimeWire, which are known as peer-to-peer networks, link computers directly, allowing users to swap digital movies, music and files with other users without the need of a central Web site to manage the exchange.

What users may not be aware of is that the software that facilitates file sharing may be configured to allow access to a portion, if not all, of a user’s documents.

Robert Boback, chief executive of Tiversa, the company hired by Wagner to help contain the data breach, said such breaches are hardly rare. About 40 to 60 percent of all data leaks take place outside of a company’s secured network, usually as a result of employees or contractors installing file-sharing software on company computers.

“We’ve seen a lot of instances where a company will be working on a product that’s not even released yet, and the diagrams for that product are already out on the Net,” Boback said. “This case is unique because of the high profile of the targets. The individuals on this list are at a very high risk, almost imminent, of identity theft.”

In June, medical records and Social Security numbers for at least 1,000 patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were exposed in a peer-to-peer data breach. In June 2007, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer disclosed that an employee who installed peer-to-peer software on a company laptop exposed files containing the names, Social Security numbers, addresses and some compensation information of 17,000 current and former Pfizer employees.

In March, a Seattle man was sentenced to 51 months in prison for using LimeWire and similar networks to dig up personal and financial information on more than 50 people, which he then used to open lines of credit in the victims’ names.

Tiversa officials found that more than a dozen LimeWire users in places as far away as Sri Lanka and Colombia downloaded the list of personal data from the Wagner network.

“To me, this was devastating,” said Phylyp Wagner, founder of the investment firm. “I didn’t even know what peer-to-peer was. I do now.”

A spokesman for Breyer said the justice had no comment on the security breach, which came to light after the reader notified Security Fix and the blog alerted some of the Wagner clients.

Wagner said his company has contracted with FirstAdvantage of Poway, Calif., which last week sent out letters notifying affected clients of the breach and offering each six months of free credit-report monitoring. He emphasized that the peer-to-peer disclosure never endangered his clients’ financial records, which are stored by a separate company. But that may be small consolation to several lawyers on the list who said they recently experienced unexplained financial activity.

“This may explain why two weeks ago I got a $9,000 cellphone bill from AT&T,” said Steven Agresta, a partner with the law firm Alston & Bird. Someone had opened a phone account using his date of birth and Social Security number, but with a different address.

Agresta said AT&T promptly canceled the account and the bogus charges, but he’s still checking his credit history and other accounts for signs of fraud.

Of the 2,000 records from Wagner Resource Group that were found online, 700 included Social Security numbers, names and birth dates, while other records included only one or two of those details.

Frank Cabri, vice president of product management for FaceTime Communications, a Belmont, Calif., company that helps organizations control employee use of peer-to-peer networks and other applications, said there are more than 120 free software titles available for online file-sharing.

“Some of these applications are more complicated than others in terms of helping users figure out what files and folders they want to share and expose, and a lot of times the user is so focused on just going after that latest MP3 file that they’re not paying attention to the default settings that come with the application,” Cabri said.

Brian Krebs writes the Security Fix blog, at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix.

Now. If after reading all this you aren’t convinced that you MUST protect your credit, we can’t help you. But if you understand how widespread Identity Theft is getting, and how easy it is for people to gain access to your personal information, then I know you’ll contact Lifelock and sign up today.

Dateline June 9th, 2008 - FoxNews.com reports that over 11,000 University of Florida students had their Social Security numbers posted online. They had been posted on the Internet for over a year and it was only discovered “accidentally.” The University has notified everyone except 570 former students that they can’t find. Bummer - what if you were one of those?

Just a few months back it was widely reported that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg had his identity stolen. It was reported that two men stole money from the Mayor, the first for $10,000 and the second for over $400,000. I believe that if the second party had not been so greedy he would have gotten away with it. Due to the size of the stolen checks the bank put a hold on them till they could be verified. Both were caught but many times they are not.

Can something like this happen to you ? The answer is YES! Can you prevent it from happening? YES!! You must protect yourself. Don’t depend on the government to do it - it won’t happen!

Waiting until it happens could be a potential mess for you! With your social security number and birthday you can have all the money stolen from your bank account. Credit cards issued in your name (and on your credit report), and even PROPERTY purchased in your name! A customer of my daughter’s at the car dealership where she worked had her identity stolen and the person actually BOUGHT A HOUSE with it! Try cleaning that mess up!

Our site offers two Cadillac of companies so you won’t become the next victim. LifeLock is the originator of identity protection. And they back it up with a million dollar guarantee. You won’t do better than that! We were going to tell you about all the things LifeLock does for you, but it’s really so much that it’s easier just to send you to their site to read it for yourself. My daughter and I both use their service.

We also highly recommend ConsumerDirect. ConsumerDirect members can reduce the interest rate on credit cards they already have, declare and recover from Identity Theft, negotiate debt settlements, dispute billing errors, manage privacy options and much, much more. And all without writing any letters or making any phone calls. Their service also enables members to improve their credit score by fixing credit report errors online. Just click what needs to be fixed and ConsumerDirect does all the work! Additionally ConsumerDirect will put a credit lock on your file so no one can apply without your consent.

Having bad credit is problematic enough without it getting ruined further through identity theft! Don’t let it happen to you. For around $10 to $15 a month you can protect yourself. It’s worth the money. Don’t delay! I’m sure that right now there’s about 10,000 University of Florida alumni scrambling to see if they have become victims of identity theft and wishing they had signed up for services like LifeLock or ConsumerDirect BEFORE their identities were published on the internet.

The IRS recently published its “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the top tax scams. Some of them are used to con taxpayers like you, while others are employed to con the IRS itself.Memorable movie characters like Danny Ocean, Lilly Dillon, and Thomas Crown, glamorize the art of the heist. Real life proves, however, that crime is a lot grittier than these smooth-talking, martini-drinking characters reveal. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the real-world tax scammer actually spends his time writing phony emails, and clinging to childish misinterpretations of tax laws. Every year, the IRS publishes a list of the most flagrant tax scams. This year’s entries include scams that target unsuspecting taxpayers, as well as scams used to get out of paying taxes to Uncle Sam. Here’s a snapshot of the top three:

Phishing

The phishing con runs like this: The bad guys send out official-looking emails that pose as IRS communications. From within the email, the taxpayer is directed to an official-looking website, and asked to supply personal information. Most likely, the email will make a soft threat about what happens if the individual fails to comply with the request. Unsuspecting taxpayers-unaware that someone would go to such lengths to impersonate the IRS-read the email and provide the requested information, which often are credit card , bank account, and Social Security numbers . The con artists record the information provided, and use it to steal the taxpayer’s identity , open up fraudulent credit accounts , and siphon money out of bank accounts. To avoid falling victim to such a scheme, never respond to an email that’s “from” the IRS. Since they don’t contact taxpayers via email, you don’t have to worry about any repercussions. Just forward the email to phishing@irs.gov and move on with your day.

Economic stimulus payment scam

Next on the list is a similar scam related to the Bush administration’s upcoming tax rebate. Con men posing as IRS officials contact taxpayers by phone or email regarding the tax rebate program. They claim that the taxpayer won’t receive a rebate check without verification of personal information.

This scam is also easy to avoid. Don’t provide bank account numbers or personal information to anyone who claims to be involved with the tax rebate or economic stimulus program. Again, contacting taxpayers in this manner is not IRS policy; the IRS will use the data from your 2007 tax return to send you your rebate check.

Weightless, invalid arguments

The IRS calls them frivolous arguments-a set of not-so-clever excuses employed to avoid paying taxes. These include things like “paying taxes is voluntary,” and “the First Amendment allows me to refuse paying taxes on religious grounds.” For more information on these arguments and why they’re invalid, visit www.irs.gov. There’s no glamour in trying to rip off taxpayers or the IRS. Scammers are better off putting their energies into their tax returns so that they don’t get hit with penalties and interest.

REF: MortgageLoans.com

BY: Catherine Brock

What The Crooks Themselves Say About Identity Protection

By Dewey Kearney

Not many of us have the opportunity to ask a convicted felon what you can do to protect yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft . Someone I know had the opportunity recently - and knowing we had a website dedicated to bad credit, credit repair and identity protection asked me if I was interested in what they had to say. Was I, boy – and how! Right from the horses mouth, as they say.

The First Thing they all said was simple enough – SHRED everything that contains personal information. How simple and yet profound. And yet they said shredding alone isn’t enough, use a cross-shredder. I have one of those but suddenly realized how little I use it.

Shredding alone isn’t enough because a dedicated criminal sometimes can piece the items back together. I actually tried it and it isn’t easy but I was able to do it on a document. If I had a whole box of shredded items it would be much harder. The difference in price between the two types of shredders is just a small amount, well worth the investment.

Most of us don’t give a second thought about our trash but a good thief does. One man’s trash – another man’s treasure the old saying goes. Just because it’s gone from your home or apartment doesn’t mean it’s “gone forever.” A dedicated thief can make a good living from your trash if you aren’t diligent.

What Should You Shred? Anything that is of a personal nature. Bank statements, credit card offers, anything from a financial institution, insurance insurance bills. I have a reverse mortgage on my home and every month I receive an update. This has my name and account numbers that some smart crook could easily manipulate for their benefit.

Pre-approved credit card offers make you very vulnerable. They can use these to open an account in your name, then they put a change of address and you never know about it. Don’t believe this? It’s true and it happens all the time.

Another Tip: Use caution about putting outgoing bills in your mailbox. About a month ago the Arizona Republic ran an article about thefts occurring from mailboxes in Sun City Arizona. Sun City is a quiet retirement community of folks just wanting to live their lives in peace, and yet there was a rash of mailbox thefts there. Once the thief has your envelope they have your checking information, the account number from the place you were sending it, your current home address and many times your phone number. That’s enough information to start a whole new life for someone using your name. The Arizona Republic recommended that you take your mail to the post office yourself rather than chance leaving it unguarded in the box.

Another Tip. Guard your social security number. Never give it out unless you know to whom you are giving it. Don’t carry it on your person and never give it over the Internet.

One Final Tip: Register for identity protection through LifeLock. They are the nation’s leading credit protection agency. For around $30 a month you can guarantee that an identity thief will NEVER get your information. And LifeLock backs that up with a multi-million dollar guarantee. In fact, the owner of the company is so sure you can’t steal his identity I’ve actually heard him state his name and social security number over the radio! Signing up for LifeLock’s service is the single best thing you can do to protect your identity from being stolen.

If you use common sense you can prevent a lot of headaches that identity theft theft can cause.

What to do if you are already a victim? Well that’s another article. Be careful!

Medical Identity Theft Is On The Rise AS Health Care Desperation Leads To Crime

Although most identity theft cases in the United States involve credit cards and bank accounts, ID thieves are now engaging in medical fraud – falsely obtaining medical care using someone’s stolen identity – according to today’s Los Angeles Times.

After surgery on her shoulder last year, Lind Weaver, a 56-year-old retired schoolteacher, was billed for the amputation of her right foot. Refusing to pay the medical bill collectors, Weaver set about trying to prove that the surgery had obviously not been performed on her – since her foot was intact – which proved a more difficult task than recovering from simple credit card ID theft.

Experts say the rising costs of U.S. healthcare are driving medical identity fraud, and many victims are entirely unaware that their medical identity has been stolen unless they receive a hospital bill or an inquiry from their insurance provider. In addition to potentially damaging credit reports and affecting future job status – since many Fortune 500 companies require access to medical records when hiring or promoting – medical identity theft can also cause fatal future hospital errors. For example, Weaver suffered a heart attack in May, and when she awoke in the hospital two days later, a nurse asked her what drugs she was taking to treat her diabetes. Weaver did not suffer from diabetes – though the woman who stole her identity did – and diabetes patients receive different heart surgeries than patients without the disease.

However, even if health complications are avoided, medical identity fraud can lead to hellish legal ordeals. In the case of Salt Lake City resident Anndorie Sachs – whose ID was stolen and used when the thief delivered a baby that tested positive for methamphetamine – her four children were nearly taken from her by social workers, though she had not given birth for two years. Sachs’ case was only resolved after she hired a lawyer and went to the local media. However, when Sachs was admitted to the hospital for a kidney infection last year, the hospital records indicated the wrong blood type, which could have resulted in a fatal error.

Victims of medical identity theft find that clearing their names can be even more difficult than those clearing a traditional credit card ID theft, largely because of laws designed to protect patients’ medical records. Once a patient reveals to the hospital or doctor’s office that their medical records are somehow tied to someone else’s – even though that person is an identity thief – their records become much more difficult to access.

The U.S. House and Senate are currently working to pass bills that push wider use of electronic health records, which could potentially make it easier for medical identity theft victims to clear their names.

Ref: www.NaturalNews.com