WARNINGS ARE NOT ENOUGH…..
Yesterday’s Washington Post included an article “Have You Been Stolen?’ in which the numerous recent security breaches of personal data by several large national creditors are outlined in detail. In several of my recent posts, I also noted these breaches and pointed out that this is an increasingly significant threat nationwide.
The Post’s article refers to “legislative fixes already in place. Federal law requires financial institutions to safeguard personal data. Several state legislatures have passed laws requiring that potential victims be notified if their information is compromised, and other states are following.”
What the American public should infer after reading that is these breaches are not new. They have been occurring for years and the public is only being made aware of it now due to new state legislation. What has the federal government been doing to protect us?
Apparently not much! As I noted before, your medical records are carefully safeguarded as a result of federal HIPAA regulations. Medical history protection is nice, but thieves and scammers can’t steal your identity and ruin your finances and/or credit with medical history……….but they most certainly can with your personal data.
Additionally, the threat, once you’ve been compromised, NEVER goes away! It could be years before a thief decides to use your identity to perpetrate a crime. After all, with the sheer volume of identities compromised, it may take time for the thieves to get around to you. However, the financial, credit and legal ramifications of having your identity used to commit fraud, steal or some other crime are HUGE!
If the custodians of our medical records can be charged serious fines for failure to protect our records, wouldn’t it only make sense for the same or stronger penalties to apply to your personal identity records?
We must also keep in mind that these creditors, while they carelessly compromise our data, also allow access to it for profit. When they’re not losing it or failing to protect it, they’re selling it………..and as long as they make money on it, they will continue to do so!
Until it hurts creditors who are careless with our data financially and they are forced to absorb the responsibility for their actions, then for most of us, it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves victims of identity theft.
If would like some guidelines for protecting yourself from identity theft under current regulations, please download a copy of my free report. (Click on the following link www.protectyourgoodcredit.com, then click on Free stuff under Pages on the right-hand side of the column, and follow the instructions.)
Once our governing bodies begin to address this problem with new legislation and regulations, I will update the report accordingly.