Lifelock continued to make headlines with both good and not so good news. In an effort to raise awareness on identity theft, Lifelock launched a grassroots marketing campaign titled “Strike Back – Defeat Identity Theft Now”. The campaign trail, which features LifeLock CEO Todd Davis, started February 24 in Miami, Florida and continues with stops in 14 other cities until it comes to a head on March 6 in Washington, DC . Lifelock hopes to show legislators the need to address the following issues:
- Limit the use of the social security number
- Stronger federal standards for lost or stolen data
- Impose prison sentences
- Credit bureaus need to be user friendly
- National acceptance of fraud alerts
- National credit registry
- Verbal authorization for all
- Take control
The campaign has been a success already with Arizona, Nevada and Georgia declaring March 2-8, 2008 identity theft awareness week. Just as this tour was generating positive public relations for LifeLock, a lawsuit launched by Experian against them stole a great deal of the thunder. Though we believe the lawsuit is baseless and merely an attempt by Experian to cut a favorable deal with LifeLock it still raised some concerns regarding the budding identity protection company. If you still have questions regarding this lawsuit read our LifeLock Review.
Data breaches showed no signs of slowing down in February highlighting the need for better legislation as Lifelock proposed. With 19 reported data breaches including large ones at Lifeblood (321,000) and Health Net Federal Services (103,000) over 560,000 Americans had private records compromised. According to Attrition.org who maintains the Data Loss Archive and Database, three companies (MLSgear.com, Lexmark International and First Magnus Financial) did not release the number of people exposed in the breach and are not included in the total.
A new study by Berkeley Law School fellow Chris Hoofnagle, titled Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks, reports that the companies with the most incidents of identity theft per billions of dollars of deposits are Bank of America, HSBC, and Washington Mutual.Companies with the most identity theft complaints were Bank of America, AT&T, Sprint, Chase, Capital One and Citibank. Information was gathered from 88,000 complaints filed by Americans to the Federal Trade Commission in January, March and September 2006. Wired.com reports that Hoofnagle stated in his report some reasons for doing the study.
“In order for the market to effectively address the ongoing identity theft epidemic, consumers need reliable information about incidence of the crime among institutions,” and “If data were available on this crime, consumers could choose safer institutions, regulators could focus attention on problem actors, and businesses themselves could compete to protect consumers from this crime.”
We couldn’t agree more. The data collected from the FTC only includes complaints to them. Police reports and reports of identity theft to Banks, credit bureaus or other companies is not included unless the FTC receives what is usually a consumer complaint. Consumers need to be made aware of the biggest offenders and as Lifelock has requested there needs to be stronger federal standards in regards to the loss or theft of our personal information. It is no wonder why identity protection companies like Lifelock, or their main competitors LoudSiren and TrustedID, acquired the bulk of their customers in 2007 and are on pace for even more growth in 2008. Until we get our act together identity protection services will continue to be in hot demand.