By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com
August 29, 2005
Credit agencies and major data brokers are making big money from
selling identity theft victims their own information, and both
consumers and the media are starting to take notice.
Information resellers such as Choice Point have been trumpeting new privacy protections for individuals in the wake of a series of data breaches and losses that exposed thousands of people to identity theft. The Los Angeles Times reported that victims of the ChoicePoint data breach can view their own personal profiles from the Georgia-based information broker, but they have to pay for it.
In a statement, ChoicePoint disputed the accuracy of the Times article.
Many institutions that have experienced identity theft or data loss will offer protection products to victims at no charge, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America. However, as Reuters reported on August 28, these same institutions are selling identity protections to unaffected customers for as much as $129 a year.
Wells Fargo's "Select Identity Theft Protection" program was developed in conjunction with Trilegiant, the direct-marketing company currently being hit with several lawsuits alleging deceptive marketing practices.
Taking a page from Trilegiant's book, the Wells Fargo program offers a 30-day "free trial period," after which a buyer will be billed monthly for the service unless they cancel in that time.
Privacy advocates and consumers' rights groups have expressed concern with what they see as data resellers profiting from the very thefts that they allowed to happen.
With free annual credit reports becoming available to the entire country as of September 1, the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) are pushing their new range of identity theft products much more heavily.
Equifax is offering a free 12-issue subscription to Money magazine as an incentive to purchase its "Credit Watch Gold" product for $9.95 a month or $99.95 for the year.
The Gold product recently won plaudits from the Javelin Strategy & Research firm, which said it provided the "most value to customers." It's provided a lot of value to Equifax too; the company reported revenue increases of $29.3 million for the second quarter of 2005.
However, as ConsumerAffairs.com has reported, credit bureaus' sloppy verification procedures and poor customer service often cause a greater danger to consumers' personal information, and Equifax is no exception.
Bruce from Indiana is the latest in a long line of consumers who found Equifax's protections against identity theft inadequate:
"Equifax has been basically useless, and will not remove two false bills from my record, even when I have letters in hand that say this is fraud. I even had the actual vendor call Equifax on my behalf, and Equifax tells them that they cannot remove this from my record either...it must be the collection agency that the bill was sent to. Unfortunately, this agency does not exist any longer. If anyone attempts to contact Equifax, the ONLY way is by mail. It does not return calls or letters. I am absolutely fed up with their lack of service."
The major credit bureaus do offer special customer-service phone lines to call, but consumers can only get access to them if they buy one or more of their products. It remains to be seen if free annual access to credit reports will hurt the bureaus' bottom line in the long term.
At the very least, the free annual reports should spur more consumers to check their credit records, in the process discovering errors like those that Bruce and millions of others have confronted.
