Managing entitlements

✍ Scribed by Mike Small

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 180 KB
• Volume: 2008
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1353-4858
• DOI: 10.1016/s1353-4858(08)70009-6

✦ Synopsis

Network Security 13 may have happened months previously. The view is that you have to prove your innocence, and having to this over an unknown period of time is very difficult. From an investigative point of view, it becomes much harder to track down when you have to go through logs and archives that are potentially held off-site. You need to be credible, and must be proactive rather than reactive. I'm often asked what the best advice to combat ID theft is. There's very little that you can do. You can be as careful as you like with your personal information, shredding bank statements, not taking so called cold calls from banks and other organisations. However, anyone can become a victim of ID theft, whether through incompetence, human error or just plain bad luck.

The best thing is to sign up to the likes of Experian or Equifax, or even both. They have excellent services that cost around £6 per month. These services can be viewed as insurance. They have Credit Expert and Credit Watch services that monitor your credit profile. In the event of a change such as a loan or credit card application, each provider will alert you via email or a call to your mobile telephone within 24 hours. If the transaction turns out to be fraudulent, you can follow up with the lender immediately before any cards have been issued. Being proactive and taking these preventative measures enables victims to appear much more credible when proclaiming their innocence.

"The biggest problem faced by individuals who become victims of ID theft is that they only find out months after the fact"

Sadly, it takes considerable effort over months or even years to repair a credit history once it has been damaged. In the world of identity theft, a stitch in time definitely saves nine.