1.06.2008

id theft protection

I've had it on my unofficial to-do list to get ID Theft Protection for over a year now, and I finally did it. Two things promoted it this week:

Over Christmas it was reported that laptops had been stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission containing voter data of over 337,000 Nashville residents including Social Security numbers.
My brother-in-law got a call from his bank while we were driving to Minneapolis last week because of "suspicious activity", which did indeed end up being a whole laundry list of fraudulent charges indicating that his credit card info had been stolen.

So I went on over to Zander Insurance and signed up for Identify Theft Protection. Zander was certain to underscore that it was not ID Theft Insurance, but Protection, as what their program provides is a recovery service in the event that you are the victim of identity theft.

It's really no surprise that our personal information is more susceptible to theft than ever, as demonstrated by the Davidson County Election Commission - actually just received my letter in the mail today indicating that I should go ahead and assume that my information had been stolen. And knowing my luck, if my credit card information was somehow stolen, I know that if I called up VISA, they would give me the run-around for weeks as they try to prove that I'm the incompetent dead-beat who actually ran up all fraudulent charges.

I don't have time for that, nor the patience... hence Identity Theft Protection.

1 comment:

jon arnold said...

If I may correct your typo, the Tennessean reported 337,000 identities on those two laptops. Not 30k. 300k. ouch.

I signed up for Zander, too. At 12.95/month for me and my wife, I find it really worth it.