What's your identity fraud risk level?
The My ID Score site said I had a low risk of identity fraud.
(Credit: My ID Score)Like many people, I'm worried about identity fraud. Not paranoid, just generally curious what the chances are that I could be victimized by things like mail theft. Sure, I could sign up for one of the fee-based identity fraud monitoring services like LifeLock or Debix, or I can get a credit report that might give me some clue that a credit card has been taken out by someone else in my name.
Now there is a Web site that offers an assessment of a person's identity fraud risk for free.
The My ID Score site was recently launched by ID Analytics, which offers corporations and consumers services to protect them against identity fraud.
The site scans the company's ID Network, billed as the largest identity fraud database in the U.S., to see what types of activities and transactions have been made in your name. It looks at hundreds of variables and data points and then looks for anomalies, such as credit card applications on the same day with different addresses or pre-paid cell phone purchases in a short period of time, said Thomas Oscherwitz, chief privacy officer at ID Analytics.
The site focuses on transactions that use your personal data and does not look at account fraud in which someone uses your stolen credit card or in which your credit card data was stolen in a network breach at a payment processing company, for example.
"We look at events within the network, such as whether someone is using your information to apply for credit cards," he said.
I tried the site out and am happy to report that my score was 63, indicating low risk. Most people fall within the range of 1-450, which is considered moderate risk, according to Oscherwitz. A score of 600 and above is considered high risk, he said.
The site asks for basic information such as name, address, phone number, and date of birth. It also asks for Social Security number but does not require it (I passed on that as I avoid giving out that most sensitive piece of personal data if I can).
The site then asked a series of multiple choice questions that the legitimate Elinor Mills would know, things like identifying cities I've lived in, addresses, phone numbers, and middle initial.
Once the score is displayed, the site offers information for how to obtain free copies of a credit report and offers links to other sites with information about identity fraud and companies that offer monitoring services.
For consumers whose score is high the site partners with the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center to provide more information about what underlying data triggered the score, Oscherwitz said.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
I got a 136, and also did not put in my SSN. Just because it's an SSL connection, never assume the geeks on the other end are encrypting their storage.
I happen to share a name with my deceased father and my son, (Jr, III, IV), so I was curious to see if their data had separation from mine. Probably the DOB helped. So, I took the quiz twice, and the questions changed slightly each time. One of the four questions appeared to be a fake, to which I answered "none of the above" both times. I wasn't sure if it was a true random fake, or something related to my father.
But in any case, the truly interesting question was about the townhouse that I moved out of 25 years ago. Holy crap! The internet barely existed 25 years ago, and I paid off that mortgage when I moved out. What the @#$#@ing database is that from?
Did I say sobering? Maybe frightening is better.
I checked mine and am also glad i fall in the low risk category.
One thing i found a bit odd is that the info. required to get this score is very basic - meaning a sibling or a friend could easily answer the questions i was asked. I dont know what good it would do them but more personal questions would be nice.
I'd much rather pay a monthly membership fee with an established agency who has a rep to protect, such as LifeLock. I do business with sites that have been around and have real track records. Up until that point, everyone else is my guinea pig. No, I'm not superior; I'm just paranoid, and justifiably so.
These people "calculate" your risk of ID theft based on the uniqueness of the information you provide. In other words, they have a Web spider or something. I can gather up this kind of data by doing a few queries on various search engines (not recommended unless you KNOW your system is clean).
For being a paranoid type, you're not being very smart about it.
That said, LifeLock is BBB accredited (which isn't much in and of itself), and has a $1,000,000 insurance backing from XL Capital, which I prefer over someone like AIG. They have their own history of "lying" and cheating, and are now paying dearly for it.
Apparently I either did not know enough information about my past or there is some confusion in the system.
What I wanted to report to this system is that you only get two tries in a 14 day period. After that you get a message that you can no longer make a request with an e-mail and phone number to contact if you wish to contest this.
I chose not to contest it. Maybe I'll try again another week, but probably not.
I also refuse to pay the BBB extortion for my businesses, that racket stinks to high heaven.
It's amazing what some people will do just because some blog told them to.
I thought the same thing when I read this article. Why should anyone trust these folks with such details? By providing those details, all in one nice, neat portfolio, if My ID Score doesn't abuse them, someone will break in and steal them.
I still do not see the "need" to use your real name anywhere.
As soon as you do it is then out in cyberspace for ever, and will be found with searches, which hackers using those bots will find.
Then you have the fact that you are giving info to a database, now they have what ever information you gave, and guess one of the places where hackers get their information ?.
As I type right now, it is highly possible my keys are being logged.
Every letter I type, if something looks close to a real name, or a phone number, or SSN or ADDRESS for example. if just one of those gets "nabbed" fraud already has a jump on you. Hackers can do so much with just one of those pieces of info.
Ands what happens after you have had indentity theft happen to you ?.
Okay so you prove it, or they clear it one way or the other, but then guess what, you now have a check mark by your name, and then after that maybe put in a high risk category.
Like having car "accidents".
How about we store sensitive informations offline of the internet servers?
Why on earth would the insurance company have my SSN where hackers could get to it?
Why on earth would the Army have my husbands SSN available 27 years later?
- by indicnetguy October 8, 2009 2:23 PM PDT
- ID Score didn't work for me. Couldn't verify my identity and locked me out after 2 tries.
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