ME&MEE

Today Judith Graham’s blog “Triage” at the Chicago Tribune has two postings with tips on how to protect against and respond to medical identity theft.  Sources include the Identity Theft Resource Center and the World Privacy Forum.  Medical identity theft is an expanding frontier in the crime of identity fraud, and with the decentralization of medical information it can be difficult to discover and resolve.

Medical identity theft can be two different types of crime - strictly financial - where a thief tries to use your insurance to make false claims for procedures that you or anyone else never received.  The trickier, and more potentially dangerous scenario involves someone using your identity to obtain medical treatment.  Not only do you or your insurance company bear the financial burden for the care, but the tests and treatments done on this “phony you” become a part of your medical history, affecting your future care and ability to get insurance.  Depending on the care provider, it can be a chore to get this incorrect information removed from your medical records.

Take a look at the tips and know your rights and action items to help you or someone you know facing this problem.

The Department of Homeland Security has openly acknowledged that federal agents can now legally seize any traveler’s laptop or “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form” without proof of illegal behavior.

In particular, the business community is expressing their fear over the fact that the government is allowing any content from these devices to be shared between “…other agencies & private groups for any reason.”

The dilemma for Congress currently is that they must review both sides of this policy. The first comes from the public, particularly “business travelers”, who say that this is privacy breach and a disruption to businesses. The second side is that this policy has taken effect in order to protect the country again terrorist attacks, which is an obvious threat that affects everyone.

Corporate risk managers have worried about potential breach of information from laptop seizures or information scans by US and foreign governments as their travelers cross borders.
 

With the growing number of products on the marketplace to “monitor” your identity, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has put together some good Q&As to help consumers decide the best strategy to choose for themselves.

Some points that bear repeating

• Credit monitoring can alert you to new accounts being opened in your name, but not for new charges placed on an existing account.
• If you’re very concerned about new accounts being opened in your name and do not plan to open any new lines of credit in the near future, then a security freeze is a much more secure way to prevent new fraudulent accounts from being opened in your name.
• A fraud alert does not freeze your credit but can be done for free by the consumer to provide a bit of extra protection.
• Look at service offerings to see if assistance services are included in the product.  Remember, monitoring services tell you what is happening, but if assistance services are not included, YOU will have to do the job of repairing your identity yourself.  It’s can be a complicated and frustrating job (believe us, we’ve got some experience in that!)