Protecting your Credit/Identity after NPD breach ...

[rick-slo]

"Just a tip here for those who haven't been paying close attention. A major data broker (NPD Group) was breached recently, and virtually everyone's information was hacked:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/23/was....questions.html


You can see if you were part of the breach by looking yourself up here:
https://npd.pentester.com/search

(Fun -- look up celebrities too)


If you're in there, you should at the very least freeze your credit with all of the 3 major agencies - it takes like 5 minutes to do so:

https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.equifax.com/personal/cre...credit-freeze/

They'll each give you a control panel where you can freeze and unfreeze at will."

I picked up the above info elsewhere and passing it on here.

[srick]

I would advise everyone to do this proactively.

A credit freeze prevents any unauthorized party from accessing your credit report. And without that credit report, no one is able to open an account in your name. It’s also very easy to lift the freeze for a limited time if you need to open a new credit card or obtain a loan. A freeze does not prevent you from using existing credit cards, etc.

Some years back, I was the victim of two instances of identity theft. One was a breach of my social security number and birthdate which was used to fraudulently claim an IRS refund. The IRS caught up with those very quickly.

The other was likely from AT&T. There was a time when AT&T required your ssn to open an account. We guess that an unscrupulous employee accessed that information. There was one successful attempt to open up a fraudulent credit card, which we were able to shut down. After the credit was frozen, an additional six attempts were locked out before they ever received approval.

As opposed to Life Alert and other credit monitoring services, the freeze is proactive and will stop the problem before it begins. It’s also free of charge.

And, you might also consider freezing any credit concerning your child’s ssn (ie age 16-25) or an older relative’s information.

Rick

[fpuhan]

I'll second that. Funny true story: I bought a new car last October. I hadn't intended to finance it, but purchasing it outright would have created other problems I didn't want to have to deal with, so I wanted to put $9,000 down and pay the rest when the first payment came due. So, yeah, I had to go through the finance rigamarole.

Oops. The finance person told me they were having a problem getting my credit rating. Oh yeah, I had locked my credit because I hadn't planned on applying for a loan. One moment, I told the finance lady. I opened my phone, went to the credit bureau and unlocked it. "Try it again," I told her. Presto! Load approved. I immediately locked my credit again. Simple as that.

[RP]

Thanks for the info, Rick...

[hubcapsc]

I thought you had to contact all three major bureaus to freeze/unfreeze...
Equifax, Experian and TransUnion... is there a single portal where you
can do it all in one transaction?

-Mike

Originally Posted by fpuhan

I'll second that. Funny true story: I bought a new car last October. I hadn't intended to finance it, but purchasing it outright would have created other problems I didn't want to have to deal with, so I wanted to put $9,000 down and pay the rest when the first payment came due. So, yeah, I had to go through the finance rigamarole.

Oops. The finance person told me they were having a problem getting my credit rating. Oh yeah, I had locked my credit because I hadn't planned on applying for a loan. One moment, I told the finance lady. I opened my phone, went to the credit bureau and unlocked it. "Try it again," I told her. Presto! Load approved. I immediately locked my credit again. Simple as that.

[David Eastwood]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

I thought you had to contact all three major bureaus to freeze/unfreeze...
Equifax, Experian and TransUnion... is there a single portal where you
can do it all in one transaction?

-Mike

When I did this recently, I had to go to all three bureaus individually.

We, too, bought a car a couple of weeks ago. The dealer asked us if we had a credit freeze - when I said ‘yes’, I asked which bureau they used, and only had to unfreeze Experian. Very straightforward.

[Cypress Knee]

My wife and I had the TV on a few weeks ago waiting for some sporting event to start. An infomercial came on talking about how unscrupulous notaries were signing off on documents transferring real estate to third parties who would then sell it, take out loan, or foreclose.

A week later I was at a seminar when someone asked the presenters (FBI, sheriff, and detectives) about the ad. They were surprised as they had not heard of that scheme before.

One of the detectives excused himself, then returned. He said he had just spoken with the tax assessors office. The scam is real.

A couple of weeks later I received both an email and hard copy letter from the tax assessors office outlying how all property owners could register (at no cost) to be notified any time that there was a proposed real estate transaction involving their property.

[fazool]

I did a little reading on this. I had recently frozen my credit due to a card being hacked.

But his NPD thing is a collection of public records - it is nefarious and bad but its all public records. Its in one big giant convenient place for bad actors but all this information of yours was out in the public domain already.

[threevok]

Thank you Derek. I have been putting this off for too long. I think I've gotten 3 breach notices in the past few months. One for the state of Colorado. I get the feeling there is some complacency going on with the keepers of data.

[Buzzbox]

Originally Posted by fazool

I did a little reading on this. I had recently frozen my credit due to a card being hacked.

But his NPD thing is a collection of public records - it is nefarious and bad but its all public records. Its in one big giant convenient place for bad actors but all this information of yours was out in the public domain already.

Sounds like par for the course these days. People seem to be both unscrupulous and knuckleheads at the same time. Time to invent a remote computer (or person) frying device to stop this crap, and AI is just getting started. I can’t wait… it’s going to get much, much worse.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by fazool

I did a little reading on this. I had recently frozen my credit due to a card being hacked.

But his NPD thing is a collection of public records - it is nefarious and bad but its all public records. Its in one big giant convenient place for bad actors but all this information of yours was out in the public domain already.

Thanks for that info. When I read about this hack, the article indicated that SS numbers were exposed. I went to the linked site pentester.com and they found several entries for both my wife and I and these all included SS numbers. They only display the last four digits, but there they were!

Some years ago when Experion was hacked, I locked the "big three" for my wife and I. We typically don't borrow money (technically, our monthly use of credit card is borrowing, but we pay it off by the end of the month as we use it for day to day expenses for which we have the money in the bank.

Tony

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Cypress Knee

My wife and I had the TV on a few weeks ago waiting for some sporting event to start. An infomercial came on talking about how unscrupulous notaries were signing off on documents transferring real estate to third parties who would then sell it, take out loan, or foreclose.

A week later I was at a seminar when someone asked the presenters (FBI, sheriff, and detectives) about the ad. They were surprised as they had not heard of that scheme before.

One of the detectives excused himself, then returned. He said he had just spoken with the tax assessors office. The scam is real.

A couple of weeks later I received both an email and hard copy letter from the tax assessors office outlying how all property owners could register (at no cost) to be notified any time that there was a proposed real estate transaction involving their property.

I was surprised to discover that, at least where I live, I could take out a second mortgage on our condo without consulting my wife. I would probably have to keep that new Brazilian rosewood custom Olson guitar at a friend's house for a while, but it could be done.

Tony