Safe Approach to Identity Theft

The Safe and Sane Approach to Identity Theft

Your identity is not safe, and there is no way you can make it safe because criminals have too many ways to steal your personal information and to take advantage of it. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), by the beginning of October 2017, the number of data breaches was already up almost 24 percent over the same time the previous year. The Equifax breach was only the latest to expose almost half of the U.S. population’s personal information, and hard on its heels, Yahoo announced a 2013 breach that had exposed billions more. And while people can place credit freezes to protect themselves against certain types of financial fraud, criminals have hundreds of other ways to exploit stolen identities.

​OK, if you think what we just presented is alarming, well, it is. But think about this: there are other risks in life that you can’t completely control or prevent - fire, theft, auto accidents or major health problems. You also can’t recover from those risks by yourself. If your house burns down, you would need funds and expert help to rebuild it. If you became seriously ill, you would need medical specialists and coverage to pay them. That’s why people buy homeowners, auto, and medical insurance.

​While it’s not as dramatic as a house fire or an auto accident, identity theft can disrupt your life just as seriously. It can damage your financial security, your career, and your good name. Medical identity theft can even put your life at risk. Your odds of identity theft in a given year are now over 1 in 20. That’s 50 times the odds of having a house fire and over 600 times the odds of dying in a car crash. And most of us lack the skills to recover from identity theft quickly and without a great deal of stress and frustration. A recent New York Times article relates the experiences of identity theft victims, citing a Javelin report that 15.4 million American victims of identity theft lost $16 billion in 2016, The article observed that “The consequences of cyberattacks can be devastating and take years to untangle, at great financial and personal cost.”

​Identity theft protection offers the same kinds of benefits as the other types of insurance: expert help, protection from unexpected costs, and peace of mind. If you have a good protection plan thatincludes guaranteed recovery, you can hand your problems over to a recovery expert who will work with banks and finance companies, utilities, medical providers and others to return your identity to its original state. They will monitor activity and alert you to new issues to validate and correct. All of this not only minimizes disruption to your life, it may also help persuade the criminals to leave your identity alone and look for easier targets.

Identity protection costs a fraction of the average out-of-pocket costs of identity recovery. The safe and sane approaches to health, driving, home and fire safety include taking all the precautions you can and then insuring against the risks you can’t control. With the cyber risks we face today, your identity—the foundation of every aspect of your life—needs the same smart protection.