Really good post on philosecurity on Identity Theft and the Protection Racket the Credit Card companies are running.
I tend to agree, if the credit card companies were really losing money everyone would have credit alerts and locks for free but right now, like data breaches, its really the user's problems and not the credit card companies or the people that lost the data.
Of real interest is that it mentions LifeLock got sued because it was issuing credit alerts on behalf of its customers.
"Last year Experian sued identity theft protection firm, LifeLock, for activating fraud alerts on behalf of hundreds of thousands of clients. Experian “claimed that alerts should be entered only when people have already been victimized by identity theft or have legitimate reasons to believe that they are at imminent risk.” (Network World, 2008.) I’ve heard that “identity theft occurs every 79 seconds.” Does that count?"
http://philosecurity.org/2009/02/02/identity-protection-racket
I guess I have to give them credit for using this as a sales opportunity. I wish I could sell my customers a product, then make extra money off of them when they screw up doing what I recommend.
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