I'm sure a bunch of you have seen this by now.
It started sometime between 4 and 6 years ago I think.
Notices being sent out from all sorts of banks, creditors, service providers, organizations and even county officials claiming they've been hacked (had a security breach) and therefore some of your personal information may have been exposed, followed by an offer of a couple years of complimentary enrollment in an identity-theft protection service.
It's almost the exact same notice every time, almost word-for-word. The notices have the return address and letterheads/logos of the actual entity they're claiming to be.
It's very interesting.
Anyone figured out what's going on or seen any official reporting on this?
I have hypotheses on what the agenda/scam is but I don't want to pollute anyone else's assessment with my own.
I’m sick of getting them and just locked my credit. The attempts to get a credit card in our name have stopped and I don’t bother with the ‘free’ credit reporting because of my credit being locked.
Quite frankly I’m sick of it all!!
I did the same thing, wish more people would follow suit.
Oh crap we've been hacked.
That was the easiest million I've ever made.
They are selling your information.
They've always rubbed me wrong. Havent even finished reading the letters, myself.
i have a question of my own: why is it my financial responsibility if an institution fails to properly identify me? if it is their fault that they believed someone else, why should i pay?
I give up. What's the agenda/scam?
Likely a standard Corporate letter template. Which would explain the near identical wording.
As to the sudden uptick. Everyone is increasingly digitizing old records, adopting new technology etc. As society has gotten increasingly digitized. Which is running into the issue. Senior Management and Corporate Leadership wants to cut corners and save money. Can’t really cut corners with Cyber Security.
Everyone has their info hacked at some point, and usually over and over. Companies (all industries) share your info, data companies correlate the info and sell that, and that gets hacked as well. In some cases the info can just be bought - like voter lists with names/addresses/phone numbers.
For me, I've had that happen a bunch but my worst thing is having all my security clearance info floating around China. That has happened publicly at least twice that I know of - and probably many more times (unless they just have a live feed of the info now).
By the way - locking/freezing your credit at all 3 bureaus is great, but that doesn't stop the hacks. They aren't always looking for credit. Sometimes they want full ID histories for various reasons - including SSNs for illegals. Sometimes they want names and addresses so some criminal can ship illegal stuff to your address and intercept it before you get it. If they see the cops they just leave. People don't even know of (or think about) this part.