The popular identity theft protection service, LifeLock, seems to be everywhere these days. Now, the LifeLock team is working with the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association to create summits on identity theft to benefit police officers.

These summits, which will take place over the summer, will cover the following topics:
*Methods used for investigation
*New and emerging methods of identity theft
*Current identity theft trends

The first round of these free summits started in October of 2008. Since then, they’ve been held in 21 different cities in the United States. Over 700 law enforcement agencies and over 2,200 officers have attended them.

The importance of these free training is threefold. First, officers learn to recognize identity theft when it occurs. Second, they learn new techniques for preventing the crime and catching the perpetrators. Finally, they learn how to support victims in an effective way.

It could be thanks to this training that Albert Gonzalez was finally convicted and tried for stealing 40 million card numbers from popular retail and restaurant chains. Gonzalez was ultimately sentenced to spend 20 years in jail for his crimes.

This brings up a good point, that if you are a victim of identity theft, or your purse, wallet or laptop computer gets stolen, it’s important to contact the police in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. If you don’t do that and simply cancel your license and credit cards and move on instead, law enforcement will have no record of the crime occurring. With the crime logged, as well as statements from you and any witnesses, it’s more likely that the identity thief – or traditional thief – will be caught.

Most thieves don’t operate just one time and then give up on their line of work. Your thief could be linked to several other crimes, and you reporting her could be just what law enforcement needs in order to finally prosecute. If you have an identity theft protection service and your plan alerts you to potential fraud, the company may contact law enforcement for you. It’s up to you to read the terms of your policy to see if that is the case.

One of the easiest ways for an identity thief to get access to your personal information is through an organization you most likely do business with every day: the U.S. Postal Service. It is very easy for a thief to find your account numbers, and sometimes even your Social Security number, just by going through your new or discarded mail. Here are some thing s you can do to protect yourself.

Shred any mail containing personal information before you throw it out. It is not uncommon for thieves to dig through garbage cans and recycling bins hoping to find information they can use. Shredding this information stops them in their tracks.

Put your outgoing mail that contains personal information in a locked box. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock, use one of the blue federal mailboxes or drop your mail in the bin at the post office.

Don’t let incoming mail sit in an unlocked box. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock on it, make sure to get the mail immediately after it arrives, or at least as soon as possible. If this is not doable due to your schedule, you may want to consider having your bills and statements delivered to a post office box, or canceling the paper versions altogether and opting to receive them online.

You can now view your credit report online, so that you don’t have to have that information sent to you via the mail. Just go to www.annualcreditreport.com, the only official site for credit reports sanctioned by the Federal Trade Commission, and request one over the Web.

Have someone bring your mail in for you if you’re going out of town. If this is not possible, contact the post office and ask them to put your mail on a temporary hold. If you will be away for an extended period of time, you may want to consider having your mail forwarded to your new location.

Report issues right away. If you find that your mailbox has been tampered with, contact your building’s management, your homeowners association or your local post office immediately to see about having it repaired. Report any suspected mail theft to the Postal Inspection Service by visiting the following website: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

Though following these tips will make your safer, you may want to consider the additional identity theft protection from the hassle and financial strain that identity theft can bring. With this crime affecting millions of people every year, it is bound to impact your life at some point. For as little as a few cents a day, you can receive 24/7 protection of your personal information from identity theft and other types of fraud, and get this same protection for your family members as well.

Since there are so many types of identity theft insurance offered, it can be confusing as to which one would best fit your needs. That’s why IdentityTheftLabs.com offers comprehensive reviews of the best identity protection services, as well as their pricing and other important details.

ID Theft ID’s?

One thing victims of identity theft may not want to see again in their lives is a photo ID since the theft of theirs may have led to weeks, months or even years of frustration. However, some victims are actually getting an additional ID that is designed to help them avoid future hassles when trying to obtain credit. And, more importantly, it can help them avoid being arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.

This new form of identification is the ID Theft Passport, which is currently available in 10 states, but is growing. This ID, which looks very much like a driver’s license, can be presented to both creditors and law enforcement. The idea is that people with the Passport can use it to prove they are innocent of acts that other people perpetrated in their names.

Without such an ID, many identity theft victims have ended up in jail, gotten their vehicles repossessed and the like. People that are assigned to arrest, repossess, etc., have no way to know that they are going after the wrong person. All they have is a name and an address on a piece of paper.

Of course, not everyone can get one of these identity theft passports. People who want one have to prove that they were victimized. Good ways to do this are with a valid police report or court documentation.

One thing this ID can’t do is prevent recipients from being victimized again in the future. It still requires some work on their part. Since they’ve already been targeted by thieves, chances are they’ve become more diligent about checking their credit reports. However, they still may not be as careful as they should be about managing their information in print or online. They may need to make some major changes in these areas as well.

Also, they have to know to protect their new ID card just as they do any others. There’s nothing to stop a “real” criminal from taking an identity theft passport and using it to “prove” that he or she is not the culprit in a crime when he or she actually is. It’s smart to leave the card at in a secure area at home or in a safe deposit box when it is not needed.

It’s also smart for former victims to get identity theft protection. If they get victimized again while under the care of a plan, they may be able to get some help with their expenses, including lost wages and legal fees. They will also get notification if thieves access their information and put it up for sale or trade and hopefully be able to minimize the damage they can do. If the same thief, or an associate of that thief, tries to defraud them again, they can let law enforcement know right away giving, them a better chance of capturing a culprit who had been elusive up to that point.

While it’s always better to get identity protection before you need it, it’s certainly a good idea to get some when you’re sure you do.

Senior citizens are a lucrative market for identity thieves for three good reasons. First, they are likely to own their homes outright since they have often been paying on their mortgages for quite some time. Secondly, they have had credit for a while, which can boost their scores. Lastly, they may have a lot of money saved up to use during their retirement, making their bank accounts especially promising.

And, since many seniors are home during the day, thieves seize this opportunity to hit them with fraudulent phone calls. In these calls the identity thieves pretend to be representing a company that does legitimate business with seniors. Often, this company is Medicare, the government health insurance provider.

During the calls, thieves tell seniors that they need to replace their Medicare cards because they have expired and ask for bank account information to help them get new ones. One key trigger here is that Medicare cards don’t expire. However, there are many people that have no idea this is the case. The criminals also try to convince the people they call of who they are by offering up the senior’s address or birth date, which they can easily find out through the phone book or public records.

Once a thief has a bank account number and the name associated with it, it’s not too hard for him or her to find out additional information needed to commit more elaborate fraud, such as creating new accounts in the unsuspecting senior’s name. Sometimes the victims don’t find out what’s happened for months because they fail to regularly check their credit reports and do not use a credit monitoring service.

To avoid becoming a victim of this type of scam, every senior needs to know how to recognize a vishing attack, which is a phishing attack perpetrated by phone. They should be skeptical of anyone that calls and asks them to verify personal information, no matter where they say they are calling from. Even if the President of the United States calls, they should say they do not give out such information by phone.

Then, they can call back the organization that supposedly called (in this case, the White House) at a proven, legitimate phone number and ask if the person that called is a real representative and if there is really a problem. Most times, they will get a no. Every once in a while they will get a yes, which is when they should tell the person they’re speaking with that it is not wise to conduct business in this manner since they are only helping identity thieves get away with their practices by confusing consumers.

Almost always, there is a more secure way to remit sensitive information, whether it be the company’s website, certified mail, or best of all, in person. It would be very trite and irresponsible for a person to suspend someone’s account because he or she refuses to give out personal information over the phone. With nearly 10 million Americans falling victim to identity theft each year, it is almost certain that the person who calls would understand. If not, cite the statistic and hang up.

For an added level of security and the peace of mind that identity theft insurance or a service guarantee can provide simply go to our homepage and find the best identity theft protection for you and your family today.

The saying goes that technology moves at the speed of light. That means every time we get a new laptop, cell phone, TV or anything else electronic, pretty soon there is a new and better one out there. This leads to millions of Americans throwing their technology in the trash, giving it away or dropping it for recycling each year. This also leads to hundreds of identity thieves getting their hands on old data on people’s discarded cell phones and computers and with 9.9 million identity theft victims in 2009 we don’t need to make it easy for these crooks.

BT’s Security Research Centre conducted a study where it looked at the content of 300 hard disks in machines that were resold and found that 34% of them still contained personal information on them from the previous owners. In fact, one machine even had confidential details about a U.S. military mission. Others contained bank numbers, medical information and financial data. There were even some personal identification numbers.

Does the thought of discovering these “gems” on a machine make these identity thieves head to eBay and computer shows? You bet it does! They can save money on a phone or PC and get personal information thrown in free of charge! They may also show up at yard sales and even at the local landfill or recycling center.

Before you start stockpiling your old hard drives and cell phone cards in your basement, turn to these tips instead:

• If you have the technical knowhow, use a wiping program to clear the data off the partitions on your hard drive and replace it with 1s and 0s. Simply deleting the files is not enough if you do not copy over them with new data.

• If you are less computer savvy, like most of us, remove the memory and hard drive from the machine and drill two to four holes in it in strategic places. A titanium bit works best.

• Take the memory cards out of the cell phones you wish to discard and break them up unless you plan to use them in another phone.

• Delete your address book and any other personal information you have saved on the phone itself. Then contact the phone’s manufacturer for detailed instructions on what to do next.

Note that you do not need to destroy the actual phone or computer. If you do, you’re really defeating the purpose if you were planning on reselling them. All you need to do is get rid of the memory, not the hardware. Then the next user can get right on the machine and start working with it with a clean slate.

The final thing you need to do is check any paperwork you’ll be packing with the phone or computer. Did you write your Microsoft password on the sleeve for the restore disk, for example? Did you scribble important numbers on the inside of your cell phone’s case?

It would just be silly to waste all that time wiping the memory and then end up giving away your information anyway because of an oversight it would have taken two seconds to correct. Sadly, this happens every day – though now it will not happen to you. It’s these easily overlooked mistakes that make an identity theft insurance plan a necessity in today’s age.

Though one can never fully protect themselves there are many steps we can take to reduce our chances of becoming the next victim. One easy way is to purchase identity theft protection but this should not be all you do, you must remain aware of how your identity can be stolen and vigilant in not letting it happen.

If you believe you may become a victim due to some previous mistakes or perhaps through a data breach letter where you were informed your personal information was compromised then you should also place a fraud alert on your credit file by contacting one of the main credit bureaus. You may even consider freezing your credit accounts.

You have the right to obtain one free credit report each year from each bureau. How important is it that you check your credit reports regularly? The short answer is – very. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States with over 10 million victims each year. And with so many options available to check your credit file, there is really no reason to leave your good name out in the cold even if you can’t afford better identity theft protection solutions.

How To Get A Free Credit Report

1. You can check your credit reports once a year for free no matter what. All you have to do is go to annualcreditreport.com, the site set up by the federal government, and put in your order. You will need to verify some personal information, like your address and Social Security number, but be assured that this site is legitimate. If you don’t feel comfortable revealing your information over the Internet, you can also order your reports in the mail or by phone.

Savvy consumers will check one bureau the first time – either Equifax, Experian or TransUnion – and then check the second and third bureaus at subsequent four month intervals so that they can essentially get a good look at their information all year round. This is usually satisfactory since the bureaus tend to share information with one another, but it is not a completely failsafe method.

2. You can get a free report each time you are denied credit. If you get turned down unexpectedly for a loan or credit card, it’s imperative that your order your credit report as soon as possible. This is often when individuals first realize that their information has been compromised. Directions should be enclosed with the denial letter you receive in the mail. You only have a certain window of time in order to obtain your report free of charge.

3. There are lots of credit monitoring services out there. Although there are many different options as far as credit monitoring goes, there is one thing they offer almost universally: access to credit reports, either from one bureau or from all three depending on your plan. If you’re signed up for credit monitoring don’t forget to take advantage of all that the service offers you.

If you don’t want to order your free annual credit report yourself a few identity protection companies such as LifeLock will order it on your behalf if you are enrolled in their service.

Unlike your credit report, you may not be able to come by your credit score quite so cheaply. However, this number is very important. It’s basically how lenders choose whether to offer you credit, and if so, at what rate. If you want to get your hands on this number, you may have to shell out a couple bucks. Alternately, you can sign up for a credit monitoring service that includes your credit score in its product package, for example, Experian’s Score Watch or Identity Guard include score from all three bureaus.

The Federal Trade Commission announced the other day that a settlement has been reached with LifeLock to the tune of $12 million. Since the breaking of this news, and partially due to a press release issued by LifeLock referencing Identity Theft Lab’s rating of them as the “Best Overall” identity protection, we have been asked on a few occasions most notably by Zoran Basich in his Wall Street Journal Venture Blog whether our “best overall” rating will remain. The short answer is yes, for now, but first lets take a deeper look at this settlement and the, ahem, errors made by LifeLock before we give you the reason for our decision.

According to a press release issued by the FTC, LifeLock agreed to pay $11 million to the FTC and $1 million to a group of 35 state attorneys generals to settle charges that they used false claims to promote their identity theft protection services between April 1, 2005 and March 31, 2009 and that LifeLock failed, at least at some point within this timeframe, to adequately safeguard their clients personal information as they had stated they would do.

The FTC took exception to LifeLock CEO Todd Davis advertising his Social Security number everywhere and referenced its widely advertised use on the side of a truck. This combined with some other statements and advertisements may have given consumers a false sense of security in regards to how well their identity was protected and for some consumers may have given the impression that LifeLock was protecting them from all or other types of identity theft when they were predominantly just protecting them from financial identity theft with a strong emphasis on new account fraud.

The press release stated “And even for types of identity theft for which fraud alerts are most effective, they do not provide absolute protection. They alert creditors opening new accounts to take reasonable measures to verify that the individual applying for credit actually is who he or she claims to be, but in some instances, identity thieves can thwart even reasonable precautions.”

Anyone who has followed this blog will know that there is no such thing as full-proof identity theft protection and that fraud alerts while effective should not be your only means of protection. It should also be noted that LifeLock changed its marketing practices by April of 2009, launched a new enhanced service by October 2009 and then, this past January, added a whole new level of protection called LifeLock Command Center that actually does help protect Americans from other types of identity theft such as criminal.

“As the crimes of identity theft and identity fraud continue to evolve, we have positioned our business to grow at a more rapid pace in attempt to stay in front of the crime,” said LifeLock Chairman and CEO Todd Davis. “With our next generation LifeLock Identity Alert(TM) system and our advanced LifeLock Command Center(TM) protection suite, we are using technologies that allow us to search broader, deeper and for more data than ever before.”

Even when considering LifeLock’s old service, what the FTC failed to see or at least point out is that Americans are mostly concerned about financial identity theft and that by discovering an identity theft situation of any kind you are better protected from other types as well because you now know that some thief has your personal information. This causes your guard to go up, at least it should, and you will become more vigilant in protecting your identity even for something totally unrelated such as a hospital visit. For example, you may ask your doctor to confirm that the last time you were looked after actually was the last time YOU were looked after.

The FTC press release also claimed that “LifeLock’s data was not encrypted, and sensitive consumer information was not shared only on a “need to know” basis. In fact, the agency charged, the company’s data system was vulnerable and could have been exploited by those seeking access to customer information. ” It also states “the settlements require LifeLock to establish a comprehensive data security program and obtain biennial independent third-party assessments of that program for twenty years.”

It is important to note that there was no external breach but still this shocked us. How can an identity theft protection company not be taking the highest of security measures when the lack of such measures can result in a devastating setback for the company. We know LifeLock has always taken the security of its clients seriously, they have earned and maintained an ISO 27001 Security Certification since January 2007, but the lack of encryption is unacceptable and should not have happened. There is no excuse for not employing the strictest security measures possible. We realize that the FTC claim is from the past and not relating to LifeLock’s current security measures but maybe this is why they hired a new Chief Technology Officer a few months back and added another Senior Executive to its technology team recently.

Many people will claim that the independent third-party assessments are over regulation but we do not see this as a bad thing. Even LifeLock welcomed the settlement and increased industry regulation.

“LifeLock is pleased with this agreement, which, for the very first time, works to set advertising guidelines for the entire industry. We welcome federal and state efforts to regulate our industry, because doing so helps to protect consumers from the risks of identity theft,” said LifeLock Chairman and CEO Todd Davis.

At least now, clients of LifeLock will know their personal information is protected to the highest levels of security. Financial Institutions, Credit Bureaus and Identity Theft Protection Companies should be held to a higher standard of security and independent third-party assessments for all of them would certainly ensure they are using best of breed technologies, implementing the strictest policies and procedures and enforcing the highest security measures possible. Don’t consumers deserve this?

So the question remains, does LifeLock still have the “best overall” identity protection. The answer is yes. As you probably picked up on, the FTC settlement was due to past behavior relating to their old outdated service and old marketing practices. This is not to condone what happened but LifeLock is far from the first company to take their advertising over the top. And quite frankly, we will leave the judgement of what constitutes acceptable marketing to the FTC, that is their role. Ours is to evaluate the service itself and for now, we still see LifeLock as the best overall identity theft protection service, and don’t see the point in punishing them for their past mistakes, the FTC just did this.

But there is a caveat to this. We never intended to recommend LifeLock to everyone, our goal has always been to find the best of breed identity theft services and review and compare them in such a way that it allows consumers to see the points of difference between these services so that they can choose the right service for them.

We consider all the companies in our identity theft protection comparison chart to be excellent and perhaps in the near future we will revert to presenting them all as best of breed and drop the “best overall” and other taglines or notes we have on our site. In the meantime, however brief, we have decided to let it stay because right now many people are shying away from LifeLock and given their current offering we don’t believe that is the right thing to do.

If there’s any good news about identity theft, it’s that some thieves are getting prosecuted and put in jail. That doesn’t make the problem go away, though, even for some that are locked up, since a few thieves still conduct their operations from jail, with the help from accomplices on the outside of course. For example, an inmate in California, who was in prison on identity theft charges, just got eight years added onto his sentence for stealing four people’s credit card information and other personal information while he was imprisoned. How he did so is unclear.

What we do know is that once he obtained the information he called his coconspirators who are not subject to monitored telephone access. They then called the individuals’ credit card companies and they got new cards issued in the victims’ names and sent to their address. Then they went on a bit of a shopping spree. In total, this scam cost the credit companies over $139,000.

Luckily, the victims of the crime were not responsible for the charges put on their credit cards. However, they were surely unnerved that a convicted criminal and his accomplices had access to their personal information. While sometimes it’s obvious how someone got your personal information, such as if you respond to a phishing email or you leave your purse on a public bus, at times it can be hard to tell – and you may never figure it out.

Regardless, it’s smart to get yourself signed up with an identity theft protection service. Once you have a protection plan, you have a better chance of keeping your credit and your good name in shape even if your information gets in the hands of identity thieves. That’s because, as a protection plan holder, you’re likely to find out quickly – not months later when strange charges begin to appear on your bank statement. Also, with some plans, you can lock down your information more than you can on your own by simply using a very secure password. You can enjoy insurance to help you recover the costs an identity theft incident can incur too, which is a statement to just how confident identity theft companies are that their services work.

If identity thieves have the wherewithal to get personal information even while they are under the watchful eye of the criminal justice system, it certainly makes sense for you to keep your information under a watchful eye as well. And speaking of criminals, LifeLock recently launched a new service that protects you from criminal identity theft. You can read all about it at our LifeLock Command Center review.

There has been a lot of emphasis lately on nationalizing health records so that a person can go to any doctor in the country and he or she can just pull them up on the computer. Sure, this sounds like a good idea in theory, but it could also go horribly wrong. Consider what recently happened to the Virginia DHP Prescription Monitoring Program, a database designed, ironically enough, to prevent prescription fraud.

In early May, a hacker was able to successful break into the program’s secure records site and encrypt all of the data it held. Said hacker then deleted the original versions of the data and demanded $10 million in exchange for the password required to break the encryption. He or she also sent a kind note saying “I’ll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid,” if the company refused to pay up.

So now not only do we have identity thieves, we have third party identity thief suppliers. How comfortable will that make you feel when you call to make your next appointment? Although all out extortion may be an extreme case, though not an isolated one, this is just another reminder that your private records are not quite so private as you believe them to be.

Not only can medical records contain a list of prescription drugs you are taking, they can also include your name and address, your birth date and your Social Security number, not to mention billing information and further sensitive history. We would like to think that anything with a confidential stamp on it would stay that way, but the truth of the matter is, you have to take precautions in case any of this data somehow happens to get out.

One relatively easy thing you can do is sign up for an identity theft protection service. While it won’t keep any extortionists from ransoming your information, it could keep them from selling it if they don’t get their suitcase full of cash. Sure, they can still post the data up for sale online; but their cronies will not be the only ones that see it, your identity protection service could as well. Then soon even more eyes could show up, such as the ones belonging to your local law enforcement department.

Since these plans have access to a much greater amount of data than the average citizen does and also have high tech tools to sort through it, this is about as safe as you can get, barring moving to outer Mongolia and destroying all of your identification. Actually, even then, you will still exist in electronic files that you don’t even know about.
Forget it. An identity protection plan is a much better way, whether an extortionist gets hands on your data or not, you’ll get the peace of mind to rest easy no matter who is trying to game the system. At least it won’t be your bank account that has to take the fall.

Over the next few weeks LifeLock will be transitioning to their new identity theft protection system. The new service will replace fraud alerts and work together with LifeLocks other services including eRecon, TrueAddress and WalletLock. Though LifeLock is touting this as a change for the better, and indeed it may be, it is clear that they would have preferred to add the new service as an addition to fraud alerts rather than a replacement. Unfortunately, the litigation brought forth by Experian, which claimed the spirit of the FACT Act was not written with the intention of letting companies set fraud alerts on behalf of consumers, was upheld in a preliminary court ruling. An extremely unfortunate decision that has left privacy experts dismayed and in the end will only hurt American citizens.

LifeLock CEO Todd Davis said they had planned for the possibility of this ruling and that the new identity protection system, which will be rolled out in the next few weeks, will offer “better and broader protection”. Davis went on to say the new system “adds an even greater level of security to protect your identity often in real time. Our new service will provide deep forensic analysis of the entire credit network to both help predict future risk and identify vulnerable members before their identity is stolen. Our new service monitors million of data sources, substantially more than the credit bureaus. These new sources include retailers, banks, mortgage lenders, utilities and auto lenders.”

At LifeLock.com, the official news on their yet unnamed new system is that it uses highly developed technologies, scientific modeling and algorithms, and multi-point data mining to detect fraud and can even help predict future identity risks and vulnerable members. We will have more information as it becomes available, including a detailed analysis, and will of course update our LifeLock review as the changes roll out over the next few weeks. For now here is what Todd Davis has to say in its entirety, just play the video below or visit lifelock.com for further details.