What a pain! Insidiously, managing our credit file online, on the Equifax and TransUnion sites, has been added to the pile of tasks that modern life imposes on us.
There is no way to rest easy, since our personal information is constantly at risk of being stolen by hackers. And it is.
In May, Mackenzie Investments, where I once bought a mutual fund, informed me in a letter that my personal information may have been stolen by hackers. At least they didn’t take the opportunity to empty the accounts. That’s something.
In July, Ticketmaster informed me that its ticketing platform had suffered an “incident,” a vague word that never bodes well. “An unauthorized third party accessed certain information in a cloud database,” the email said, before adding that my “encrypted credit card number” and expiration date were at risk.
If the trend continues, I should receive a third such alert in September.
In the meantime, both companies offered me a free year of credit monitoring. In the case of Ticketmaster, I had to click on a link that took me to TransUnion’s website to take advantage of this offer… But how could I know if the email was legitimate? How could I be sure that I wasn’t helping criminals access my file by clicking on the link? I would have to call them to find out for sure.
Let’s face it, the chances of escaping a data breach are pretty much zero. Our information is sitting in a multitude of clouds that seem just as easy to penetrate as the real thing. Cybercriminals even managed to outsmart Equifax and steal the data of half of Americans in 2019. That says it all.
In Quebec, the number of security breaches is exploding. The Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI) received 444 reports during the one-year period ending in late March, or 1.2 per day. During the previous year, the CAI received 254..
Read “Record number of data breaches last year”
Since our personal information is everywhere and its protection is not perfectly ensured, the burden of compensating for security gaps falls… on you and me.
But that’s okay, we all have plenty of free time to file fraud alerts with credit bureaus, to evaluate their various identity theft protection and monitoring programs, to change our dozens of passwords every 45 days, to lock and unlock our file, to check it diligently and to have it corrected when necessary by calling Equifax and TransUnion. Besides, all of these activities are a hell of a lot more interesting than any other passion. Isn’t it?
The key…the lock
I’m kidding, of course. All this management is as time-consuming as it is unpleasant. So, quickly lock your files in both agencies. It’s efficient and doesn’t take too long. Because the moment a thug has bought an SUV under your name and the bank is after you, which happened to two people in my neighborhood, the challenge begins.
Martin Lamarche, for his part, simply discovered in his TransUnion file that his address “had been returned to Ontario.” After being the target of a few frauds, including an attempt to open a credit card in his name and $12,000 in purchases in Mexico and Western Canada, he wanted to rectify the facts. The process, by phone and by mail, took him six months. He sent his passport, his driver’s license, his credit card statement…
As soon as there is a problem, it is up to us to prove that we are the victim. This responsibility is very heavy. It is a big mental burden. For the credit agencies, it is as if we were guilty. They do not trust us and it is up to us to have to prove cases.
Martin Lamarche, victim of identity theft
In reality, it is even worse when the information is true. In the case where a fraudster obtained a loan with someone else’s identity, for example, the credit file is tainted, until it is corrected.
To say that technology was supposed to make our lives easier…
With the increase in data theft and fraud, the government must quickly find a fairer system for consumers, a system that does not rely solely on the goodwill of for-profit companies. Highly critical of TransUnion and Equifax, the Consumers’ Union believes that the credit file should be nationalized given the amount of sensitive information it contains. Note that the government does not have a great reputation for effective IT projects either. The French system, which only lists outstanding payments, seems to me to be another interesting avenue to consider.
“If, in 20 years, the banking system has not evolved, if the government has not put its pants on and put in place a mechanism… it will still be the same thing. The information that was leaked is still good after 20 years,” warns Eric Parent, CEO of EVA Technologies and technology expert.
The very concept of credit scoring is problematic in many ways.
In addition to being calculated in an obscure way, this number is used in all sorts of ways by employers, property owners and insurance companies. Not to mention that it can very poorly reflect a consumer’s financial capacity, since not having debt is harmful. They even suggest that young people use a credit card to build a good record. They risk going into debt to make a name for themselves. Absurd.
Read “Your credit report used for everything”
Co-CEO of the Consumers’ Union, Maxime Dorais, proposes the idea that everyone starts life with an average rating that would improve or not, over time, depending on their financial conduct. I really like his proposal, which would also improve the lives of immigrants who arrive here without a credit record, which complicates their existence.
Fraudsters are creative, it is high time we were just as creative, to put a spoke in their wheels and to invent a new system that protects us without us even having to lift a finger.
Read the article “After Equifax, how to protect your data?”