Much of the buzz around the security industry this week revolved around Wired’s story about LifeLock’s CEO getting his identity stolen not once (which we knew about), but an additional 12 times. Guess 13 is not Todd Davis’ lucky number.

Obviously the media blitz posting this guy’s Social Security number on buses, TV, and other mass media made this guy target #1. And the reality is no identity protection network is going to be foolproof for a pretty simple reason. The companies issuing credit don’t always check for fraud alerts, so a fraud alert may not be triggered when a new account is opened. Even if you are religiously monitoring your credit, you are blind until the fraudulent account shows up where you can see it.

But what’s troubling to me is the guy didn’t know about the issues until a collection agency came after him. I’m concerned for several reasons, and the blame can be directed everywhere. First to LifeLock, how do you not see 12 new accounts? Hard to believe that none of the accounts showed up on Davis’ credit history. If not, what is the point of their identity protection service again?

Also note that none of the 13 transactions were for big numbers. A couple hundred here, a couple hundred there. That’s been my personal experience as well. The fraudsters don’t try to milk personal accounts of thousands at a time because that will set off alarms. They don’t want to be discovered until they are long gone.

More disturbing is how the merchants handle most of these situations. In the crazy search for growth at any cost, they cut corners. It’s as simple as that. They don’t check credit ahead of time (or they would have seen the fraud lock). They don’t report new credit accounts to the bureaus (which would have triggered a credit monitoring alert). And they don’t verify addresses when sending bills (which would have shown an inconsistency on the original application). Amazingly enough, a collection agent finds the guy within a hour, but the companies can’t do that over a year.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since these big companies just build a ‘shrinkage’ number into their models. They figure a certain percentage of their customers will not pay, either for legitimate or fraudulent reasons. And I guess that’s cheaper than setting up the right processes to prevent a portion of that fraud. Ultimately it’s just economics, but it’s still very disturbing.

Buyt if I allowed myself to get into a funk every time a big company did something stupid and harmful, I’d be even grumpier than I already am. So I need to let that go. Though there are things we can and should do to minimize the damage of identity theft.

  • (Try to) Prevent it: OK, you can’t really prevent it. But you can act proactively to minimize your attack surface. That means setting up your own fraud alerts (since the credit bureaus and their lobbyists succeeded in killing the ability for a service to do this for you) and use a credit monitoring service (I use Debix, but there are lots out there).
  • Accept it: Understand that it will happen and there is likely nothing you can do. Getting upset won’t help. You need to be focused and contain the damage.
  • Contain it: As we always say, you need an incident response plan for your business in the event of a breach, but you need a personal incident response plan as well. Who do you call? What steps do you take? Those should be documented and in a place you can get to quickly. You need to act fast, and having a documented process reduces emotion and lets you make the decisions when you’re clear-headed and not rushing.
  • Confirm it: The credit bureaus are a hassle to deal with, but you have to stay on top of them to make sure your credit rating is properly cleaned. The three you need to worry about are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. That means checking your credit rating on an ongoing basis and keeping all documentation on the fraudulent use of your accounts.

Finally, don’t post personal information on the side of a bus. We know how that turns out.

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