Tighter protections needed for your ID

If you’re a careful consumer, you shred your sensitive mail, safeguard your Social Security number, and keep personal information at home. But even if you take those steps, you can still become one of the nearly 10 million victims of identity theft in the U.S. each year.

Our story on data brokers highlights how your information is collected and sold by companies you may have never heard about. Information including your Social Security number and date of birth are in the hands of your bank, insurance company, and doctor’s office, as well as government agencies and countless other businesses that use these data.

Since early 2005, an estimated 90 million records containing identifying information have been breached, prompting action on the state and federal levels. States have led the way by enacting strong new consumer-protection laws regarding data privacy and security. Consumers Union is urging Congress to expand and strengthen those existing state rights for all Americans.

For example, Congress should require companies, government agencies, and organizations to develop and enforce strict data-security practices, including telling consumers every time there’s a breach of sensitive information. Notification is crucial, since it provides an incentive for companies to keep information secure. It also allows people who may be at a higher risk of ID theft to take steps immediately to avoid becoming victims.

Congress should require data brokers to let people see and correct the information they hold. Now, you can see that information only if it’s used for certain purposes, such as credit or employment.

We also need strong laws to prevent identity theft from happening in the first place. A good starting point is to give all consumers the choice to place a security freeze on their credit files. This stops crooks from opening accounts in your name, because it prevents creditors and others from checking your credit to process new account requests unless you unfreeze your credit files using a PIN or password. Twenty-five states have adopted security-freeze laws. All consumers should have the ability to place a security freeze that is affordable, fast, and easy to use. (To see if you can place a credit freeze, go to www.ConsumersUnion.org/finance/creditfreezeinfo.htm.)

In addition, Consumers Union wants Congress and states to pass laws to help get Social Security numbers off ID cards, off the Internet, and out of the mail. They shouldn’t be printed on employee, military, Medicare, insurance, student, and other types of ID cards, and the sale of numbers by data brokers should be restricted. Lawmakers should act to keep your Social Security number out of the marketplace by banning its collection unless it is essential to complete a transaction and won’t be used for any other purpose.

Congress can do a lot to fix the problem, but it shouldn’t give thieves a head start by preventing states from developing new solutions to protect consumers and enforce the law. States have pioneered many protections against identity theft and should be allowed to enact consumer rights that don’t directly conflict with the conduct required under federal law.