Identity Fraud Threat And Impacts Continue For Decades
Friday, June 05, 2009
I started this blog after a prior employer's data breach exposed the sensitive personal data of all of its employees and former employees, including mine. Like many other companies, in 2007 IBM offered its data breach victims one year of free credit monitoring with Kroll.
I have always felt that one year of credit monitoring was not even close to being long enough to cover the duration of the threat after the data breach event. This Reuters news story proves it:
"Two decades ago, Charlie Weidman, an upstanding family man from Boulder,Colorado, lost his wallet. Twenty years later, Mr. Weidman found there were three active warrants for his arrest and that he was listed as "armed and dangerous" by his local sheriff`s department... Mr. Weidman, who learned that he had been the victim of ID crime during a routine background check for a mortgage refinancing. To his disbelief, Mr. Weidman discovered that in addition to the criminal record, he had accumulated $50K in medical debt for hospital stays he had never taken and had a new driver`s license issued in Florida."
To summarize: over a couple decades this consumer was victimized in several ways: identity theft, criminal identity fraud, and medication identity fraud. I believe that this could happen to any of us.
Any bill of rights for consumers must acknowledge the duration of the threat. And, as long as companies provide token efforts of post-breach security (e.g., one year of free credit monitoring), then it will be consumers who absorb the true, ongoing cost of identity fraud from data breaches.
If this situation bothers you (and I sincerely hope that it does), write to your elected officials in Congress and demand legislation for longer and stronger post-breach help for consumers. In my opinion, after a data breach companies should provide consumers with at least 25 years of free credit monitoring, identity resolution, and protection services like Security Freeze fees.
What do you think?
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