In their commercial, they feature a cop who’s identity had been stolen by a fellow cop. He mentions that he noticed something on a credit card bill that he didn’t recognize, or something to that effect. He goes on to say that it went on for EIGHT YEARS before he figured out there was a problem, and presumably signed up with the company to put an end to it.

So how piss-poor of a cop do you have to be for it to take EIGHT YEARS for you to realize you’re being stolen from, repeatedly, by someone rifling through your desk at work. I sure hope he wasn’t working on any urgent cases. Maybe a basement desk… cold case files…

Anyway, that particular endorsement is not going to sell the service to anyone who thinks for a moment about it. They should have stuck to showing the president of the company driving around with his social security number on the side of the truck.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was asked about a couple of recent purchases (today and yesterday) from vendors I had never heard of. I told the nice fellow I had not made those purchases… and inquired about the last few I did make. He read me the list from the past 30 days, and we found three MORE false charges. Lovely.

The card was immediately canceled and a new one is being mailed to me. All of the false charges have been removed, and will be investigated. I also let them know about the only vendor I’ve dealt with recently that is “new” to me… I’ll hold off naming them until I hear more regarding the investigation. I will say it’s a company I only found because of a “too good to be true” deal on 120mm fans: free after rebate.

I have no idea if the company in question is at fault, either through a security leak, an unscrupulous employee, or outright criminal activity. I will say that in over ten years of dealing with credit cards online, I have never had a problem of this sort. Ever. I’m generally careful to the point of paranoia, with active virus scanning, spyware monitoring, root-kit checking, and both hardware and software firewalls. Everything is patched with all applicable security updates. Does that mean there’s nothing here? Well, nothing common… and I don’t hang out in places I’m likely to acquire anything “uncommon”.

So unless one of the major businesses I regularly deal with have been compromised (and that’s always a possibility), then the likely answer is this new, small company that was supposedly just trying to drum up some business is at fault – intentionally or otherwise. I’ll be contacting them immediately to let them know of my suspicions, and to expect a call from MC’s fraud detection / security department.

On the positive side: I have to commend the service that caught this activity. The charges were all to companies that seemed to be normal for my buying habits (computer related components, primarily). Granted they didn’t catch the first couple, but they did catch it within days, and took immediate action once they did. While I was a bit bothered by the bank representative’s poor command of the English language, it wasn’t so bad as to keep us from dealing with the issue, and he was very polite and helpful.

Will this change my mind regarding online shopping? Probably not – although it will make me wary of small, “new” online businesses, which is a shame. I am a definite proponent of small business, and anything that makes me not want to look to them for occasional purchases means I can’t or won’t support them as much as I’d like. That’s a shame.

You’ve probably also heard that the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) are required by the Federal Trade Commission to provide you a copy of your report every year, for free.

Do you know that the commercials mentioned above are a fraudulent (in my opinion, don’t send the lawyers, I’m entitled to my opinion) attempt to get you to PAY for what they* are required to give you for FREE? Sure, they justify it by providing your “magic number” (credit score) as well as the report… but that’s a generally nonsensical reason to give up your hard earned money, unless you happen to be planning the purchase of a new home. Most of us just need to keep an eye on our credit reports – to protect ourselves against ID theft, fraud, and the stupid mistakes creditors are known to make.

The pay services do allow you access to your report any time you like… but again, how many of us want or need to see our report every day, week, or month? Every few months seems to be fine – and the free reports as mandated by the FTC will provide just that, as long as you apply a modicum of self-discipline.

FTC Facts For Consumers regarding free credit reports.
ANNUALCREDITREPORT.COM — The ONLY real site for free credit reports.

A Warning About “Imposter” Websites

Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law – annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer “free credit reports,” “free credit scores,” or “free credit monitoring” are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the “free” product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly “free” service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don’t cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

Some “imposter” sites use terms like “free report” in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these “imposter” sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.

annualcreditreport.com and the nationwide consumer reporting companies will not send you an email asking for your personal information. If you get an email, see a pop-up ad, or get a phone call from someone claiming to be from annualcreditreport.com or any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies, do not reply or click on any link in the message. It’s probably a scam. Forward any such email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

Here’s what I do:

I have a reminder through my email client that appears once every four months. Three times a year, I remind myself to pull a single credit report, moving sequentially through the three services. I resist the temptation to subscribe to any of the little pop-up offers on the way to the free report, and I save a copy of the report to a secure storage device each time. Some of them refuse to provide a report that can be downloaded (print only), however PDFCreator or a similar program deals with that nicely.

Unless you’re a victim of identity theft, or have some serious credit problems that require a higher level of monitoring, you probably don’t need to waste your money on “services” that provide nothing of value. Take advantage of the free reports the monitoring services are required by law to provide.

*note: “They” may be the credit reporting services, third parties in collusion with said services, or simply third parties out to make a buck by misleading the consumer… I have no idea, and frankly I don’t care.

edit: I had thought to provide links to the fake “free” credit report sites… but they don’t need the little bit of traffic this site would provide… they’re already all over the television, radio, and internet. Which makes it all the more apparent that people need to be told there’s a real way to get your reports for free.