ID Fraud Protection: Loophole to get it free discussion

OwenA

Is it really possible to get identity fraud protection? The public are told best way to protect themselves is to take care over releasing their personal details unnecessarily. The problem with this is that it can be difficult to find out what personal details have been used when someone has been unwittingly involved, as a victim of impersonation, in a fraud. In my case, for example, I had to go to the ICO before Tesco would release the documents relating to my being a victim of impersonation. I then found that Tesco had only my correct name,address, date of birth and gender, which is easy to find out on anyone. Information concerning my telephone numbers, e-mail address, occupation and years in that occupation were all incorrect, but these had not been checked as the first four items were deemed, by Tesco, as being all that were ‘necessary’ for its own purposes. The company policy has apparently not changed on this. A bank account shown as being in my name (which it passed on to Vodafone and Orange) did not in fact belong to me. As for the card which Tesco said was used for credit checking purposes the company not only says that it does not keep a record of the numbers but has failed to respond, on more than one occasion, to a direct question to let me know if it actually used (not would have) details of a card in my name before it despatched phones to my address.

It ispossible to get ID insurance but opinions on this are mixed. This article about the policy issued by Experian is worth reading;

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cardsloans/article-2627599/Experians-6-month-cover-dont-admit-DONT-need.html

I don’t have a credit card so I’m not sure what insurance protection is offered, but eagleeye (Post 87 above) raises questions about the ones they had. Relevant to this, VictimofImpersonations (Post 89) says;

CRA data is not reliable and credit providers and CRAs are not careful enough in the way they handle our personal data

How true this is. Last week the first item on an episode of ‘Rip-Off Britain’ concerned someone who was arranging the funeral of her father and intended to pay for the costs, about £3000, from his estate. The funeral directors agreed to this at first but then called her and told her she must pay a 50% deposit up front because she had a poor credit rating. She agreed, only to be called the next day and informed she would now have to pay all of the money before arrangements would be made. Fortunately, the manager of the bank at which her father’s account was lodged agreed the money could be paid from that account so the arrangements were made after all.

One can imagine how distressing such a situation could be. It was only later, after ‘Rip-OffBritain’ became involved, that it was discovered two items on the database of the CRA used by the funeral director were incorrect. This lead to the low credit score.The CRA passed the blame on to its data suppliers, which, it said, had given two variations of the bereaved daughter’s address. It then stated it invested heavily to ensure that only accurate and relevant information is updated and loaded on to its data base. I wouldhave thought that any ‘heavy investment’ would lead to elementary mistakes, especially when they concerned such simple matters as double checking someone was on the electoral register or questioning why two addresses had been lodged, would be immediately detected. It would appear this is not the case.An advisor from the Money Advice Service subsequently stated that 1 in 5 people who check their credit score with a CRA find inaccuracies.