Partner Article

Deep Blue Publications Group LLC: Secure your financial

You might have subscribed to a credit monitoring service or a special insurance so you’re not really worried if crackers did make use of your credentials to conduct fraud, but you probably didn’t think that recovery from a case like that will take many months of unpaid time and effort.

The issue is not getting any easier to deal with: While crackers are getting their hands on an ever-growing treasure trove of sensitive data even from big players like Sony and Target, an increasing number of those records are also getting used. Deep Blue Publications Group LLC estimates that 30% of US citizens affected by a security breach eventually became a fraud victim last year.

A case study done by Deep Blue Publications Group LLC included a victim of a data breach from 2013 who was afterwards provided with a free service of credit monitoring. The monitoring apparently paid off as they discovered that new accounts have been created in two other giant retailers which racked up over USD 7,000 in charges using the victim’s credentials. He would then spend the next 8 months filing reports, submitting documents and talking on the phone all to clear up his record in the concerned agencies and in proving his innocence to his bank.

In most cases, those effort and time spent following up the incident is wasted unless a special insurance has been bought beforehand or the victim has sued—and won.

The only thing that’s arguably worse than credit card fraud is debit card fraud—victims could end up with literally an empty bank account as any transaction on a debit card readily reflects to the bank account. Also, it takes a long period of time before any fund gets restored, if at all.

Banks may be able to absorb the fraudulent charges but there will still be a lot of headache involved on the victims’ part before they recover their money and clean their credit history. What’s more, it could get frustrating when they realize that such cases of identity theft are hardly prosecuted.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Cyralle Jane Munich .