Dale Penn

Consumers may have finally scored big time!

Credit reporting agency TransUnion has agreed ( as part of a pending class action settlement) to provide free credit reports and credit monitoring to anyone who had a credit card, loan or credit account between January 1998 and May 28, 2008.

In case you’re counting, that amounts to over 160 million Americans who would qualify for free credit monitoring. Under the settlement, the free monitoring would be good for between 6 and 9 months.

After a 10 year legal battle in which TransUnion was accused of selling private consumer data, it seems that anyone with a loan during the last 10 years will get this neat gift by simply applying for it.

The data in question was sold to marketers like retail and financial institutions, who then analyzed it and sent out unsolicited offers (a.k.a. junk mail) to consumers like you and me.

In addition to the free credit report available now from the big 3 bureaus, consumers will also get free monitoring of their credit files. Monitoring can be a useful early warning signal that an identity fraud has occurred or may be pending.

Until now, it seemed that consumers had no defense against the sale of their personal and private credit profiles. During my public lectures, I have always shared the dangers of this sort of “dirty tricks” industry practice which I refer to as “Pirates Peddling People’s Personal Preferences.”

A TransUnion spokesman denied that any law was ever violated and claims that the practice in question was terminated in 2001. The company plans to make lemonade from lemons when it begins an ad campaign in mid June to announce its free monitoring plan to the public.

You can read a copy of the settlement online at: www.listclassaction.com Claims can be filed starting June 16th, 2008 on the website or by calling 866 416-3470.

Be afraid…..be very afraid.

We live in a world where our personal habits, personal preferences, personal information,  and private lives are sometimes taken for granted. Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer now realizes the folly of this careless, foolish and whimsical approach.

Last week, msnbc.com reported about the rash of failed savings and loans who are dumping mountains of personal information into trash bins as their businesses shut their shingles, fold their tents and abandon their clients.

The article chronicles the failure of First Magnus Corp. who was one of the largest mortgage lenders in the nation. The company was hailed as a “powerhouse” of savvy technological innovation. As unimaginable as it seems, “tens of thousands” of  documents including credit card and social security numbers were “dumped” in a nearby trash bin.

It now appears that every personal tidbit we make available in the process of securing credit for mortgages and secured or unsecured personal or commercial loans is up for grabs and beyond our ability to provide or even expect protection. Is that line of credit really worth the open exposure of all your personal data?

This new reality hit home for me today as an eagle-eyed industry associate correctly pointed out that a commercial lender who served each of our company’s mutual business clients had suddenly collapsed, leaving their customers and pending applicants’ data completely unaccounted for.

Mountains of juicy private data files are turning up in dumpsters and garbage cans all over the country. This criminal carelessness leaves us all exposed and hopelessly vulnerable beyond our control.

What’s a consumer to do? Protect yourself at all costs. Private identity theft insurance, regular credit monitoring and reactive credit restoration services are all good ways of keeping your guard up. To avoid pro-active identity self-defense is foolish.

The reality is that the information that passes through our hands and into the care of nameless, faceless, careless corporate grunts cannot be safeguarded with any degree of reliability.

Despite the fact that the Fair Credit Reporting Act was amended by Congress in 2003 to mandate better consumer privacy protection, commerce and industry must each do their part.

Because of the implosion of the sub-prime lending industry, many phone lines are down, many office cubicles are empty and many trash bins are full. In the new financial frontier its “every man and woman for themselves”.

Why not begin your proactive identity theft prevention/resolution plan today?