ID Theft Protection - Why we bought it in Texas!

My fiance, Ted, was a victim of ID Theft in 2004 after purchasing a Christmas gift on EBAY. Prior to this incident, we considered EBAY to be a safe on-line website. All of our friends were purchasing items from EBAY at that time. Approximately 1 month after his EBAY purchase, Ted noticed that his computer became very slow and eventually did not work when he turned it on. He called a computer expert and had him visit his home. Upon investigating Ted's computer, the expert immediately knew that a hacker had entered the computer. He advised Ted that this had become an epidemic in the area.

(Did you know that New York was only listed as no. 8 state on the Federal Trade Commission's January 2006 ID Theft report? Other cities such as Houston are more vulnerable to ID Theft. This report showed that customers lost more than $680 millions due to fraud in 2005. The internet-related complaints alone accounted for $345 million in the United States).

Immediately after finding out about the hacker, Ted called his credit card company and learned that $750 worth of charges were already made to his Visa within the last 2 days. The hacker had ordered women's shoes on EBAY and changed the forwarding address to an abandoned building in Buffalo, NY (8 hours away from where we lived). After stealing his credit card information, the hacker proceeded to buy several unusual items from an Adult Shop in Buffalo, NY.

Our Visa SIU representative conducted their investigation and found that the hacker stole the credit card information from EBAY. At the time, Visa only reimbursed Ted for a portion of the money that he had lost. We contacted EBAY and they did not take responsibility for what happened. Instead, an EBAY representative told us to read the "disclaimer" on the bottom of their website. There was nothing that we could do.

We did research and found that we were not alone.

The Federal Trade Commissions January 2006 report listed the following states as being most vulnerable for ID Theft:
1. Arizona
2. Nevada
3. California
4. Texas
5. Colorado

Top Texas ID Theft Victim locations:
1. Houston
2. Dallas
3. San Antonio
4. Fort Worth
5. Austin


In Texas, the following are the most common types of ID theft/ fraud:
1. Bank Fraud
2. Credit Card Fraud
3. Employment- related Fraud
4. Phone and Utilities Fraud
5. Government documents or benefits Fraud
6. Loan Fraud

We also learned that there new insurance companies, such as Lifelock and Zander Insurance, who were offering ID Theft protection insurance for a small cost per month. After doing extensive research, we learned that Lifelock was the better ID Theft Protection Insurance company. (My future article "Lifelock versus Zander" will show you the difference between the two services).

To learn more, please click on the Lifelock.com banner above for 10% off your Lifelock policy.