Wolf Tracking

47 asked:


I’ve noticed a huge trend lately of people using credit/debit cards for virtually every transaction they make, no matter how small. I work in a retail store and people will use them for $2-$3 purchases, which is asinine. Don’t people realize that all they’re doing is unwittingly furthering the goal of a cashless society and making banks even more money? Of course, there are times when the usage of a card is warranted, such as items bought remotely (mail/internet/phone sales) and larger purchases that you want the CC company’s protection for or for something that you don’t immediately have the cash on hand. Cards were never really intended for daily, intensive usage; this is part of the reason why there is so much fraud and identity theft. People also frequently live beyond their means with cards, which is another pitfall. I will stick to CASH, personally-no one makes/charges a transaction fee, and companies do not get personal info about me and my buying habits!

Brandi Jones asked:




For the past five years, identity theft, has been the #1 fraud complaint filed with the FTC. In 2006 , the FTC received over 200,000 reports of identity theft, comprising over 30% of all fraud complaints received last year. Can you imagine the results now?

Requesting your credit report yearly and noticing unusual activity is one small way to protect yourself, but obviously it’s not enough to save you. There is another viable solution that cannot only restore your identity, but it can also notify you, quickly if you have potential problems. An awesome company called, Prepaid Legal Services, has teamed up with the world’s leading independent risk consulting company, Kroll Background America, to create the Identity Theft Shield. This program provides easy access to resources needed to understand your credit report, and the information and services that are needed to fight against an identity thief that may threaten your financial status. The Identity Theft Shield has been created to alert you of certain account activity and restore your credit standing, if compromised.

You don’t have to be wealthy or extremely rich to be a target for an identity thief. Identity theft strikes regardless of race, sex, age or economic standing. While an identity thief can assume your identity in just a couple of hours, it can take you many years to restore your credit back to the standing that it was at previous to the thievery. Experts estimate that a typical victim will lose, on average, $1,000- $1,200 in out-of-pocket expenses and face hours of contacting the appropriate institutions and agencies, to report the fraud and attempting to reverse the damage caused by the crime.

If you have the Identity Theft shield before your ID is stolen, you can make a single call and let the experts do all the work for you, which will save you time and money! The monitoring that this product provides allows you to take a proactive approach. In fact, early detection of suspicious apprehensive activity is one of the most powerful tools the Identity Theft Shield offers for protecting your credit standing and your good name.

The Identity Theft shield is available to individuals as either a stand-alone product or an addition to the Pre-Paid Legal Family Plan. This product provides up-to-date credit reports through Experian at no additional cost, allowing the members to have their credit score appraised by an independent scoring service. In addition, the list below specifies a few of the ways the Identity Theft Shield can save you time and money, while giving you a sense of security, and a peace of mind:

* Reduces out-of-pocket expenses and time spent away from work and your family, with valuable services from detection to resolution.

* Licensed Investigators will work in your behalf to help correct identity theft issues you have with affected agencies and the proper institutions, including:

- Credit Card Companies

- Financial Institutions

- All three credit repositories

- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

- The Social Security Administrations

- The Department of Motor Vehicles

- The United States Postal Service

- The Law Enforcement Personnel… amongst other organizations that may be affected.

* Fraud alert notifications are sent to all three credit repositories, the Social Security Administration, the FTC, the U.S. Postal Service and affected credit card companies and financial institutions.

* Proactive searches of applicable local and national database are made to track down suspicious information, including:

- Criminal activity in your name with your county’s records and certain federal watch lists.

- Department of Motor Vehicle records in your state

- Unknown addresses affiliated with your name

- Your Banking activity reported as fraudulent.

Identity Theft continues to be a national crisis and is here to stay, and everyone’s at risk! The good news is you don’t have to be a victim of this monstrous crime.

worrywort777 asked:


I really wonder specifically whether my bank with it’s protections (and fine print) has a better likelihood of preventing fraud or do the Experians of the world provide a quicker way of determining this>

Puripong Koomsin asked:




LifeLock was the first company to offer identity protection against credit card and bank account frauds, etc. Later came other companies such as IdentityTruth, LoudSiren, etc.

Here is what LoudSiren provides:

1. Fraud alerts are set to remove your name from pre-approved credit such as found in mailing offers.
2. When you sign up, you get free credit reports.
3. You need to verify all new credits in your name. When there is a new credit for your verification, LoudSiren (not the bank) delivers a message to your phone for you to either accept or reject. You just press a button to accept or reject.
4. You pay $10 a month (individual coverage) or $99 a year. Your membership is automatically renewed so that it does not lapse, and your identity becomes vulnerable.
5. Should your identity be compromised, you are covered in terms of expenses incurred legally and for lost wages due to restoration of your identity, for up to $1,000,000.

How does LoudSiren stack up against LifeLock? The former does not monitor possible illegal activities with your account numbers such as sale of your account numbers, and neither will it cancel your credit card or call your bank should you lose the contents of your wallet. The latter do both.

When your name and social security number are used to apply credit, LoudSiren sends you an automated telephone call whereas LifeLock has an actual person calling you. Instead of following automated rules, you can speak to a live person and ask questions if any.

Membership of this service is also limited to people of 18 years and above. LifeLock on the other hand, has coverage for children, and this is useful because it is not unusual to find pre-approved credit offers toward those under the age of 18.

Here is what LifeLock offers:
1. Automatic fraud alerts
2. Automatic renewals
3. Free credit report
4. Removal from pre-approved credit offers
5. Protection of your address
6. Good customer service
7. Possibly the lowest pricing (when you factor in the discount)
8. $1,000,000 guarantee in the event of identity theft

It is a no brainer that LifeLock is the choice identity protection company to use. There simply are more services offered at less pricing. And why only get yourself covered when the rest of your family needs the same protection. Besides, the more services are offered, the more convenient it is for you. Why do some things yourself when these can be done by someone else? As well, who needs automation when there is a real person to communicate with?

If you should still be skeptical, the $1,000,000 guarantee should prove to you the confidence this company has of its products. So confident is the CEO that he actually publicizes his social security number on the web to challenge identity thieves. All this plus good customer support should spell professionalism to you.

What is more, all this for only $10 a month, which most people can afford. That is hardly much to ask for, for the peace of mind that you can get, and as mentioned, all the services bundled in.

Chintamani Abhyankar asked:




Identity theft continues to threaten your credit and perhaps your entire financial life.  Now there are nationwide laws in place to protect you. You can now apply for a security freeze or fraud alert to make your credit report secured and difficult to access for identity thieves.

A fraud alert is an easy option for you to prevent fraud.  You can just call any of the credit bureaus requesting for such alert to be placed on your credit report. It will warn new creditors the possibility of identity theft on your account and would suggest them to take extra care while granting fresh credit in your favor.  It is like a red flag on your report.  You can make an initial request to apply fraud alert for 90 days.  If you want, you can extend it up to seven years.  You need not pay any fees while requesting for such an alert.

On the other hand a security freeze blocks your credit report totally.  No new creditor will be able to access your report and extend you any credit on that basis.  So it is highly unlikely that identity thieves will commit any new fraud with your credit report.  You are required to pay a fee while requesting it, but if you are a victim of identity theft, you can do it without any charge.  Such freeze can remain on your report as long as you want.  If you want to remove it, you need to pay some fees again.

If you make the comparison between these two options, a fraud alert is a less effective tool. It will not stop a prospective creditor from referring to your credit report or granting you fresh credit.  It will only give an indication that a creditor needs to be a bit careful and should contact you specifically before extending credit.  To the contrary, a security freeze will prevent any creditor to view your report in the first place.  So even if your social security number or other personal details are with identity thieves, they cannot open a new account to get new credit.

If you strongly suspect your personal details are compromised, you should go for a security freeze. It will give you peace of mind.

klancy k asked:


I do risk management for a company that sells online. When an order comes in, we call the person placing the order so that we an confirm the purchase.

About once a week, we find a customer that has stolen someone’s credit card and used it fraudulently, however this happens through PayPal. PayPal doesn’t seem to do much about reporting identity theft because PayPal has the name, the shipping address… and after calling some of these frauders up to discuss their actions even weeks or months later, there hasn’t been so much as a visit from an office, a letter in the mail, nothing!

My question is this: Since identity theft is a crime, but PayPal isn’t reporting it, how can I report it to someone that takes it seriously? e.g. I know that the credit card company would love to know the identity of someone that commits identity theft. They want to press charges. However, I never know what credit card a customer paid with (no details at all) – That is how PayPal works. They don’t give details because that makes for consumer protection issues.

If I have details of someone that has committed a crime such as identity theft or payment fraud, how do I submit that information to a place where an investigator is going to find it?

I believe that credit card companies investigate this kind of stuff, however PayPal never helps me to talk to investigators to provide information, and I know PayPal isnt’ providing information to investigators because the criminals go without prosecution or any kind of contact.

Patty P asked:




The numbers are staggering, every 3 seconds someone becomes another victim of identity theft. With the threat of identity theft growing day by day,Identity theft protection services like Lifelock have become quite popular. Lifelock is a company that promises to prevent identity theft from happening. The question is, does it work?

How does Lifelock prevent identity theft?

Lifelock takes several measures on behalf of its customers to prevent Identity Theft.

Lifelock will contact all the major credit bureaus and ask them to place fraud alerts for you.

They will then repeat this process every 90 days automatically. This is something that can be done free by anyone Lifelock admits, but it would be a major hassle to have to update the fraud alert every 90 days.

Lifelock will also remove you from all the annoying junk mail offers that fill up our mailbox on a regular basis (atleast my mailbox anyway) and they will also make sure you are taken off all the pre approved credit card offers that are extremely annoying.

Customers of lifelock will also be sent a free credit report from all the major credit bureaus so you know exactly where you stand with your credit.

Lifelock boasts that anyone that that becomes a victim of identity theft while a customer will receive up to $1 million dollars in compensation. This leads many to believe that if they are victimized they will get $1 million dollars. It is important to read the fineprint with this offer. You will discover that you will receive any damages that you suffer if you become an ID theft victim. They will also pay any legal fees to regain your “good name”, but in most cases this will not amount to 1 million dollars (atleast not in my case sadly)

It seems to me that lifelock is more of an insurance policy than an identity theft protection service For 9 bucks a month, I can see where it could help some people sleep at night.

This is my Lifelock review, I hope you enjoyed it.

Mya’s Mom & due w/#2 3/27/10 asked:


My ex bf tried to get a discover card in my name. I filed bankruptcy on the 18th and I was pulling up a credit report and saw an inquiry for discover financial. And it had His address and his phone number and he didn’t even get the place that I worked right on it for the employment. So, I have put a temporary credit alert on my credit and I did turn him in to the federal trade commission. They said to keep putting fraud alert protections on my credit. They said since he actually didn’t open an account that I didn’t need to make a police report. But i want to tell someone rather it be the police or sheriffs department. I t hink that he might have stole my birth certificate to, but I can’t prove that. I just want to know if I should go a head and tell the police or not. He is on parole for stealing from me. Can he still get introuble for an attempted identity theft or not.