Between the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Medical Information Bureau (MIB), your medical information is pretty much available to anyone on their system. So if you’re a victim of medical identity theft, the information can spread quickly – meaning you might have your hands full trying to get it all corrected. And fixing medical identity theft is both difficult, and extremely important, since you don’t want your doctor deciding what you need based on someone else’s health information that just happens to be in your health file. The World Health Organization has a valuable series of FAQ’s to help with understanding and fixing medical identity theft, but here’s the Cliff’s Notes.
An Explanation of Benefits (EOB) will give you an idea if you have an issue or not. Get this from your insurance company.
In December of 2008, the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent—The highest rate it’s been at in a number of years. The economy is down, people are losing jobs, and identity thieves are praying on those who are in the bleakest spots. Yep, identity thieves. The only thing that an increased unemployment rate and decreased economy mean to them is additional targets for their scams.
Employment and unemployment identity theft scams aren’t new. They’ve been around as long as identity theft has, but they’re becoming more common as the economy flounders. These scams target two groups of people: those looking for jobs, and those who are employed.
Those who are employed can fall victim to identity theft when a person from their employer takes advantage of access to personal information. It happens more often than most people realize. Your empl
There’s a lot of noise these days about “cloud computing” and it seems to be catching on with some companies. It makes sense to the “C” level executives, because it means they don’t have to spend so much money on data storage or maintaining servers and what not. Online data storage has been around for about as long as the internet, but now that there’s such a big push that direction, I started thinking about what this would mean for data security. When companies are having a hard enough time keeping your personal information safe from hackers and data breaches, what happens when they put it out on “the Cloud”?
The basic idea of cloud computing is that your information is stored out there on the internet “somewhere”, available for you to access it whenever you want, from any computer. It’s a neat idea that
An identity thief can get access to your bank account several ways. Stealing your debit card is probably the most common. But whenever you pay for something by check, you’re handing over your account number and routing information. Identity thieves have found check printing software is easy to find at the local Wal-Mart. With that, and a copy of your check, they can have a field day.
However it happened, your bank account is empty (or worse) and it shouldn’t be. We think of it as “identity theft”, but the bank will probably call it account fraud, unauthorized withdrawl, or true-name fraud. What should you do?
The EFTA (Electronic Funds Transfer Act) gives banks some guidelines on how to resolve disputes with ATM/debit cards. Be sure to balance your account once a month when you get your statement. If you notice an error, report it immediately. If yo
Jennifer and Rick took over the company that their father built from the ground up. In the years they’ve worked at and owned the company, they’ve grown it by offering compliance services in the transportation industry. On a daily basis, they struggle with Department of Transportation regulations, transportation tax issues, and myriad other details of owning the business. What they never dreamed they would have to deal with was identity theft.
Business identity theft is growing at an astounding rate. And many small and medium-sized businesses just don’t realize how at risk they are. Take Jennifer and Rick’s company for example. It’s a small company, with less than ten employees and a few hundred customers. Why would an identity thief be interested in them?
Unfortunately, that’s the same view that thousands of other small business owners have, and it leaves them open for identity theft. In a survey
Spyware is one of the most prevalent methods that identity thieves use to collect the information needed to steal your identity. It’s such a problem that some experts estimate that nearly 80 percent of personal computers are infected with spyware. It’s also a problem that shows few signs of slowing down.
Spyware is a pretty common term, as it relates to identity theft. But what exactly is it? The easy answer is any malicious software that collects your personal information. But that answer really is too easy.
A more accurate description of spyware is that it is a group of software applications designed to collect your personal information or change the configuration of your computer without your consent. The