Balancing the Scales: Judge Finds in Fraud’s Favor

OK... not exactly.  It's actually worse, to some extent: Judge finds in favor of a credit reporting agency. The agency, Experian, was suing LifeLock, the company best known for publishing its CEO’s Social Security number in it's advertising. In its suit, Experian claims that Lifelock cost them “millions of dollars every year” by processing unnecessary fraud alerts through their system. (If you've ever been a victim of identity theft, you're probably catching a strong stench of irony right about now.)

LifeLock itself is not beyond controversy. And, frankly, they charge $10 a month (or $110 per year) for something you could do yourself--contact the credit reporting agencies every 90 days to renew a fraud alert on your account that requires a potential creditor to make a "reasonable effort" to check for identity theft before opening a new line of credit in your name. On the other hand, it comes came with a $1 million guarantee, one less thing to think about every 90 days, and--for those who could afford the fee--they were doing something that the credit reporting agencies, and the creditors, should have already been doing in the first place.

My bet is that, with LifeLock out of the way, Experian is already investigating ways to charge consumers its own "reasonable effort" fee. Perhaps they'll call it a "Protection Fee".

Read more @ Wired.com:  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/lifelock/

About Jeff M. Fischbach

Jeff Michael Fischbach is founder and President of SecondWave Information Systems (SecondWave.com), a consulting firm specializing in Forensic Technology. Since 1994, he has served as a board member and technology adviser to numerous professional organizations and corporations. Mr. Fischbach has been engaged as a litigation consultant and Forensic Examiner, offering expert advice and oversight on matters involving intellectual property, computers, information systems, satellite, tracking and wireless communications technologies. He has advised law enforcement, foreign government representatives, judges, lawyers and the press.