Credit System Needs To Be Cleaned Up To Prevent Identity Theft
from the not-a-good-system dept
Monday's big bust of the identity theft gang that stole thousands of people's identity and millions of their dollars has brought up a lot of issues. Despite the thousands of reports telling people what to do to avoid having their identity stolen, this scam wouldn't have been stopped by any of those methods, suggesting there are bigger problems. In fact, plenty of people are suggesting that the problem is only likely to get much worse, which is leading some to come up with some suggestions on how to prevent this type of identity theft in the future. It seems that the real problem is how the various credit bureaus are set up - and how they make it easy for companies to get your credit report, but difficult for you to view your own credit report, or to alert you when changes have been made to it. If the credit bureaus were forced to send you an email alert telling you when changes had been made, or to let you log in to your account (like any online bank system), a lot of this would have been prevented - as people would have caught the thefts much more quickly.
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Why should the credit agencies change?
I've seen several people's lives overturned by identity theft, even if it wasn't direct. Someone stole my younger brother's social security number, he didn't even have to steal my younger brother's name. When my brother (who hasn't opened a credit line before) bought a car, the car dealership wouldn't sell him a car because his social security number had been used before by someone else.
Not checking with the social security administration to make sure the number was valid, the various credit agencies took the other guy's word for it and recorded the social security number as his. My brother was forced to file for identity theft, thereby prohibiting both himself and the usurper of his SSN from being able to apply for credit.
Even worse, the police have done absolutely nothing, and the social security administration has informed my brother that there is nothing they can do about it either. And imagine how many places want your social security number: Vons, Safeway, Walmart, Target, etc...
The whole system has to change, not just the credit agencies, but the financial and government agencies have to change too before identity theft will be reduced...not doing so will only cause identity theft to increase.
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Re: Why should the credit agencies change?
My roommate knows who did it, and the really sad thing about this is that the police have done nothing to prosecute the person responsible, even though a simple handwriting analysis would provide sufficient grounds for investigation into the matter.
Like you said, the credit bureaus, and even the police don't give a damn about your credit standing if you aren't a criminal. If you're a victim, you're screwed.
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They need change. Yes.
Credit information (IMHO) should be reported to all 3 agencies. I was recently rejected for a car loan because of "insufficient positive credit history" - well, when companies report only the negative, what do they expect? Experian was the only agency that has my 5 years of car payment history on file. Not one late payment. Why don't Equifax and TRW have this information? With something as important as credit reports, the information should be accurate. Inaccurate information should be easier to remove.
It's all annoying...
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