In today's Journal, Jane J. Kim writes very clearly about the different tools that are now available to consumers to protect themselves against identity theft. The article explains the advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Great reporting!
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I've been AWOL from Denialism Blog because one of my UC-Berkeley projects has become all-consuming.
I'm interested in sparking a market for identity theft protection. A real one. One where consumers can actually make choices among banks based on their actual ability to address security attacks…
Brian Krebs reports good news: Trans Union, one of the three major consumer reporting agencies, will offer all consumers the option to freeze their credit files in order to prevent identity theft:
A credit freeze directs the credit bureaus to block access to a consumer's credit report and credit…
At Slate, Gabriel Thompson writes about a little-used legal provision that could go far in helping farmworkers fight wage theft and other labor abuses. A part of the Great Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act, the statute is known as the “hot goods provision” and it gives the U.S. Department of…
'An issue that affects all of us': Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
by Kim Krisberg
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being…
So with all these new tools and options, it looks like the market is working a solution to the problem. Less chance that we need to enact laws to protect the consumers. Why have government intrusion where the market works? Hey, Thanks WSJ!
Here's a totally insane thought: What with the property rights enshrined in our rule-of-law model, how come me, the piddly individual consumer doesn't own my own data? You'da thunk that as long as the government was ensuring that IP was protected for Microsoft and Phrma thus enabling their cash flow, they'd have some thoughts on protecting my individual property as well. Probably sounds thoroughly communist.
I get:
Page not found - /denialism/2007/10/%3Cbr%20/%3Ehttp:/online.wsj.com/article/SB119318394702669159.html
when I try to hit this link. Any ideas? Thanks.
Use this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119318394702669159.html
Thanks for the post. It seems very DMA-like in that one has to proactively request it, then pay for a freeze on information. (Yes, I realize it would completely ruin their business model to have sharing opt-in ;-)
Any idea if the "Freeze" has similar loopholes? For example, with DoNotCall.gov, they exempt non-profits, political organizations (which I'm ruing the weeks before the election) and businesses with which you have had a "prior relationship."
I have my credit frozen. You can't open any line of credit without calling the bureaus and requesting a temporary lift. (This is remarkably painless, I've done it twice now.)
However, companies can still get access to your credit history and information. It's not a privacy barrier.
I totally recommend it. Easy to set up, and easy to take down. The $30 fee (in my state) is completely worth it.
@Ted--credit monitoring is the product of the market, and I think it was Trans Union that initially created the fraud alert (which was later codified in federal law), but credit freeze is a creation of the California legislature.
@Jim--even with a freeze, some companies (and the government) can get access to your file. For instance, companies that you already do business with (your existing credit cards, mortgage, etc) can get the file.
Sarcasm aside, I think that state laws in this case are not as good as federal regulations would be if the legislators embraced our side; consumer protection and an individual owning and controlling their own workproduct (consumption history?).
I believe that local laws are being used by lobby interests to obfuscate the issue solution and to kick the ball down the field. It is in their business interests to have an incomprehensible and dissimilar patchwork of laws based on local lobbying efforts.
I don't think you can exactly say that the market has been working towards a solution. The big three credit bureaus only recently caved in to making credit freeze available to everyone. In fact, they only caved in after 39 states had enacted laws requiring the ability to freeze your credit. I would say that's the market begrudgingly reacting to legal forces, not capitalistic ones.
What I don't like is that, in states that don't require it to be free, you have to pay to freeze your credit. That's making you pay to opt out of something you may not want in the first place. Identity theft of children is on the rise, since it often goes undetected for years. Just as with the Do Not Call list, you should be able to opt out for free, especially since we're talking about three private companies that are benefiting financially from doing close to nothing about abuses of their data.
I think the credit freeze should be free and then you should only have to pay to have it thawed each time. Banks and credit card companies could of course then offer to pay the fee for thawing your credit.