Did you realize you can pull your official employment history for free and check the accuracy and for signs of employment identity theft.

Have you thought about the fact, when you apply for a new job that an employer will do a background check? What if someone has taken your identity, found a new job and now erroneous information has been posted? Don’t forget, that employer may also check you out on Facebook, LinkedIn or your blogs.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FACT Act) is the law that lets you obtain a free credit report from the three credit-reporting agencies every 12 months. You may not know that the FACT Act also lets prospective or current employers gather information about you for background checks. This is a a great tool to know what they’re seeing about you – and to check for signs of possible identity theft.

Some credit reporting agencies and investigation companies compile what is known as “investigative consumer reports”, which are used in limited circumstances such as background checks for employment, insurance policies, and rental housing. These reports do not contain information about your credit record that is obtained directly from a creditor or from you. (For example, it won’t have information about a late payment).

Federal law requires your current or prospective employer to get permission from you to conduct the report. The good news is that if the information in the report is used by the employer to make a negative hiring decision, the employer must give the applicant a copy of the report.

We suggest that you be proactive and get a copy of this report once every 12 months, for free, just like your credit report. You can check it to see if someone else with your name has a work history that may be confused with yours, or may be a result of identity theft. You also have the right to correct and dispute inaccurate information in an investigative report, just as with your credit report.

To order your report, check out the LexisNexis Employment History Report. There’s no guarantee that LexisNexis has a file on you however; as it says on its website, “our files would only contain information on you if LexisNexis provided your Employment History Report to an employer.”

Ordering is easy. Call 866-312-8075, Sunday through Friday, to start the automated process. You must give your Social Security number, current street number, zip code and date of birth for the report to be started. Have a pen and paper ready to write down the report tracking number, in case you need to call and follow up. If you’re not comfortable giving information over the phone, you can instead download and send in a report request.

Information courtesy of Debix Newsletters

Data breaches seem to hit the news every day. If it happens to you be aware that more email “phishing” scams can occur. Your data has been compromised, so never let your guard down!
Here is what the BBB suggests:

* Do not reply to the e-mail or click any links in them.
* NEVER give out personal and/or financial information via e-mail. They may claim to be a representative of your bank, IRS, or police, but these organizations will contact you in a letter.
* Let others know about these scams
* When sending personal information, the transmission should be encrypted. Make sure the the website is secure. One way of doing this is to look for an ‘s’ in the http part of the url. The S stands for secure.
* Grammatical errors and misspelled in these e-mails can be a tip off that it is a scam.
* Never wire money based on any instructions in these e-mails.
* Obtain anti-virus software and run it at regular intervals
* Contact the Federal Trade Commission at their website http://www.FTC.gov or by phone at 1-877-HELP.
Therefore, stay vigilant and mindful that there is always someone ready to take your personal information!

Listen/watch this quick video and be aware of what you reveal with your usage habits!!

The thieves are always ready to take your money or your identity. Thinking gift card? Trying the auction websites? The FBI this year has posted the top ways to prevent the various types of scams from happening to you or your family or your business: http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/escams_112410
For more information on e-scams, including take over of financial accounts of small to medium size businesses visit the FBI’s E-Scams and Warnings web page: www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/e-scams

Data Breeches are costing millions each year. The HITECH Act has not changed data protection as first thought. Dr. Larry Ponemon from the Ponemon Institute (which conducts independent research on privacy, data protection and information security policy) has submitted a great blog on the statistics which is available at : http://www.ponemon.org/blog/post/poor-privacy-practice-is-ailing-healthcare-industry

It can happen to you. Worse it can happen to your children. Computer hackers. Taking control of you computer. Watching every move. The hacker used social networking sites to spread a virus and infect computers with malicious code, thus infect and take over more than 100 computers. This is more than just identity theft, it was for extortion and control. Read the following FBI press release and verify you have not had communications with the screen names or email addresses listed: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/november/web-of-victims/web-of-victims

Despite the law stating medical breaches involving more than 500 people must be listed on the Health and Human Services (HHS) breach list, the Identity Theft Resource Center recorded medical breaches which never made the list. Do you know why? The HHS list allows the loophole of “risk of harm” without requiring federal law enforcement verification. One state has reported more than 200 breaches. Most are not included in the Identity Theft Resource Center Breach Report because they did not include sufficient pertinent details regarding the event. Some states now harbor a protected breach list which is not made public at all, or is only accessible by exercising the Freedom of Information Act. Doesn’t this make you wonder why is it all so protected? Read the entire article from the Office of Inadequate Security
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12436

Watch this “Youtube” video so find out how easy it is to gain personal information from the coy machines built since 2002. They have a hard drive to store infomation, but to buy an encyrption package is an extra $500.00, so most users do not do it. These machines for resale come from everywhere and go everywhere including overseas.
It begins with a bit of advertising but be prepared to be amazed at what you hear and see.