In early October, Equifax announced another 2.5 million consumers’ data was stolen bringing the total to 145.5 million people. The data stolen includes names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and in some cases driver’s license numbers. Chances are, most adult Americans were victimized by this data theft. Let’s look at what’s changed, what to do, and how this relates to your home and car insurance.
Two data breaches of government systems have made headlines since late May. One involved the Internal Revenue Service where hackers gained access to 104,000 tax returns. This pales in comparison to the hack of the Office of Personnel Management where the personal data of 21.5 million current and former employees, as well as applicants was breached.
No home policy covers everything, so options allow people to tailor their policy to meet their specific needs by adding the coverage they need, but not paying for coverage they don’t need. Here are 5 more options worth knowing about.
Last week, I introduced 5 home insurance options home owners should consider, but that barely scratches the surface. Depending on the insurance company, there may be up to 2 dozen options, and what would life be without options?! Since no home policy covers everything, these options help tailor the coverage of a policy to the individual needs of each home owner. Here are 5 more options worth knowing about!
Credit card fraud and identity theft have been in the news a lot over the last 6 weeks. It all started with the news that Target’s card processing systems were hacked resulting in the unlawful theft of 40 million customers’ account numbers and PINs. This data was sold on various black markets resulting in fraudulent purchases being made with fake credit and debit cards.
Target and news services disclosed late last week the PIN numbers of debit cards were also obtained as a part of the data stolen during the debit and credit card breach at US Target stores from November 27th through December 15th. Security analysts recommend anyone who used their debit card at Target during these dates go ahead and change their PIN number.
One of my clients emailed me on Saturday. She’d recently shopped at a Dallas area Target store to pick up some items for Christmas and had just read the news about the credit card breach at Target stores across the country. She was concerned and wanted to know what to do.
Identity theft, and the fraud associated with it, is a growing problem in the US and across the globe. Out of 2.06 million complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission, 370,800 were identity theft related. In Texas, the rate of identity theft complaints rose 17% from 2011 to 2012, or 28, 299 up from 24,162.
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