The Sealy News in Texas has recently reported that after investigating hundreds of identity theft incidents in the Houston area, 38 people have been arrested in connection with these crimes. These arrests come after a year of investigation by the Austin County Sheriff’s office.
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Here is another case of portable hard drives or portable discs being stolen that contained personal information. The Telegraph has reported that the Ministry of Defence has recently admitted to a theft of some portable discs that contained the personal information of possibly thousands of personnel who are currently serving and who are now no longer in service.
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Nowadays, there are basically two types of news articles circulating the internet when it comes to identity theft monitoring/protection services. Those that support them and those that do not. This might make it very challenging for someone who is trying to determine whether it will be worth signing up for these services to protect their name. Many articles that do not support identity theft have mentioned that you should not pay for something that you can do as a consumer for free. While this might be the case, have you placed your free fraud alerts with the credit bureaus yet or have you ever done this in the past? This might be a key question to ask yourself in determining whether you want to have a monitoring service, however, when determining if you want credit protection, you will want to put more time and effort into your decision.
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The Bank Of New York Mellon was breached earlier this year (February 2008) involving, what they thought was, about 8 million people. An investigation back in May 2008 revealed that about 4.2 million people were affected when tapes were lost with identity data on them. This incident has since been re-examined, where it has been found that over 12 million people are involved. Those customers who have been recently discovered are now being sent letters to notify them of this data breach.
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Our last article showed some of the ways that identity thieves use valuable personal information to start a “tab” for the victim. Here are more ways that personal information can be used (continued from our previous post): (more…)

We all know that identity thieves are experienced in using stolen identities. If you put together the various ways that they can use your information, it is quite scary.

1) they can open new credit card accounts in your name. And if they are successful opening one account, you can believe they will go ahead and open as many as possible. Once this or these accounts are opened, they will charge up hefty bills that are never paid, which will eventually appear as delinquent on YOUR credit report. By the time you are aware of all of this, it will take a lot of time and effort to clear your name, if you can clear it. Resources are key in this process.
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It has been reported that recently the store “Forever 21” posted to its website that they have been notified by law enforcement of a security breach that involves their system. Illegal access to the stores records has been detected and customers who have shopped at this store on the following dates may have been affected:
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There has been a recent report that directly affects many students of Tennessee State University. Tennessean.com has recently reported that the private financial information of over 9,000 Tennessee State University students has been “missing” since early September. A financial aid counselor at the university, downloaded the information onto a portable computer storage device and this device has been reported as missing.
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Your social security number is the doorway to your credit and should be treated like gold and very carefully protected and guarded. Rather than keeping your social security card in your wallet or purse, find a safe place to keep it and yet have access to it when it might be needed (for instance, employers will require a copy of your social security card when you start a new job.). Some have made it a practice to write their social security number on their checks. This is not a good practice to use and it is definitely not safe.
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Are you a parent who worries about protecting the identity of their child(ren)? It would be nice to think that all parents would, however, that is not the case. In the case of thousands of children, identity theft is a little too “close to home.”
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