Nashville Mayor Karl Dean announced today that all 337,000 registered voters whose personal information was compromised will get free identity theft protection through Debix. The move is in response to a large outcry from concerned and frustrated residents. The compromise occurred when two laptops were stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission in a burglary that occurred over the Christmas Holiday season. The stolen laptops were not encrypted though they did have password protection.
“My goal is to not only protect the voters whose Social Security numbers have been put at risk, but also to protect the integrity of the election process. We’re going into an extremely important election season and I want all citizens to feel 100 percent confident that they can and should participate in this process without worrying about their personal information being compromised,†Dean said.
The City signed a contract with Debix giving voters free identity protection for the first year and a significantly reduced rate the second year.
“We are honored to extend the Identity Protection Network to the voters of Nashville,†Bo Holland, CEO of Debix, said. “In the past six months, we protected similarly affected citizens on behalf of the state of Ohio and the state of Connecticut and are well prepared for the mission at hand.â€
Debix will place fraud alerts with all three credit bureaus and automatically renew them. Using state of the art, patent pending technology, Debix’s automation system receives phone calls from creditors and forwards this call to three customer phone numbers. Customers then hear a recording of their own voice and can approve or disapprove the transaction by use of a personal identification number. This technology even prevents an identity thief who has your cell phone from taking advantage of your credit. Identity Theft insurance is also provided.
Debix has been the most requested provider of Identity Protection by companies, states, and cities who have experienced a data breach. Debix in partnership with LoudSiren, has also made great headway in to the business to consumer market trailing only the market leader Lifelock.