This has some good stuff if
- you yourself have an ID Theft problem, or
- you want a perspective on ID Theft.
However, it degenerated into a discussion about whether a TechCrunch
posting is much more than a PR Newswire posting for a tech.
Fight Identity Theft with TrustedID
Posted by Michael Arrington
TrustedID launched their first product, IDFreeze yesterday (and announced funding by Draper Fisher Jurveston) to help protect consumers from identity theft. I met with co-founder Scott Mitic today about his company.
Identity theft is a really big and really expensive problem. In the U.S. alone, ten million people per year fall victim to identity thieves - and sometimes it takes years to track down what’s happened, shut down fake credit accounts in victims’ names and restore their credit and name to good standing. Shredding mail and other personal documents is not enough to protect yourself, either. Last year, over 50 million consumer data records were lost by corporations. The FTC estimates that identity theft costs our economy about $50 billion per year. For more information on identity theft, see here.
And
things aren’t getting better. Twelve states have enacted legislation
that allows consumers to lock down credit - meaning no third party can
request to view your credit information unless and until you unblock
your credit report for them. A whole group of companies, including
credit bureaus, auto dealers and retailers, are opposed to this kind of
legislation because it makes their job - selling your credit
information and/or opening new credit accounts for you - harder. To
fight this state-level legislation, they are fighting hard at the
federal level to enact new
legislation forbidding states to regulate this area…and it looks
like they might suceed.
This is where TrustedID comes in. First, they are fighting the federal legislation and trying to expand state level consumer protection laws. And second their new product, IDFreeze, will help consumers protect their credit.
The
product works in different way depending on where you live. If you are
in one of the twelve states that allows consumers to freeze their
credit report, they will handle this for you (there are lots of fees
and paperwork involved in getting this done - more hurdles that the
credit bureaus have put in place to discourage consumers from doing
this). If you are in another state, they will put a flag on your credit
report that requires companies issuing you credit to contact you
separately and verify that you intend to open a credit account. Either
way, your level of protection will increase dramatically.
And if there is a problem with your account in the future, TrustedID will work to get your credit score cleaned up on your behalf.
The costs is $8 per month. I recommend everyone in the U.S. strongly consider using this service.
UPDATE: 3/14/06 - The harshness of the comments below rivals what I saw on a post about Tello that I wrote in January. I took a stab at refining and explaining my position (link is here), and I hope that this helps explain why I like this company so much. I apologize to anyone who thinks that me showing this level of enthusiam for a company means that I am being paid off somehow - that isn’t true for this post or any other that I’ve written or will write in the future. I also note that, as usual, the worst comments are anonymous. [not really] I continue to strongly recomment that people take a look at this service. I will certainly be using it to protect my identity.
“I recommend everyone in the U.S. strongly consider using this service.”
With all due respect, did you really mean to say this?
Examing the website:
1. No names of principals are listed.
2. No address is listed for the company.
3. No description of this company’s own internal security policies.
Please explain why we should be confident that this company will itself be safe for the average user.
Is this an infomercial? Mike, whats the deal?
Ok - so I should pay a 3rd party $96 a year to just watch what the credit card companies already have a vested interest in watching?
No thank you…
Mr. Curious brings up good points.
Also, can anyone comment on how this product differs from those offered by the major credit bureaus as well as companies like PrePaidLegal (whose ID Theft product has a cult like following among its affiliates)?
You Don’t Have to be on the Net to get your Identity Stolen…
The old-fashioned way still works … junk mail you throw in the garbage can come back an haunt you. Check out the story at cockeyed.com.They ran a test: tore a credit card application to pieces, taped it back together, changed the address and pho…
Mike,
Techcrunch is great, but this one misses the mark. So little info. As Bruce Schneier (www.counterpane.com/schneier.html) often notes, security methods must have transparency before they can be trusted. TrustedID is not even close.
As a person who has been through a case of credit card fraud, I am dubious. My wife had her identity “stolen” about 6 months ago. Several cards were opened in her name and some purchases made. People can go to AnnualCreditReport.com which is a legit service (go to FTC.gov site and search) and get their credit report annually immediately from all 3 agencies for free. When we saw the fraud, we put on an alert with one agency, and by law, that agency has to alert the other two. We got additional reports over time from these agencies for free b/c we had this identity theft. At least for now, the fraud has stopped. Why pay $8/month for something that is free? I’m sure they might offer a few add’l conveniences (hard to say from their site), but is it worth it?
I have to agree with most users on this thread. For me to trusdt a company like this, they have to be open and honest first.
Hmm..seems like techcrunch might be taking $$$ to promote crap to the trusting followers who rely on so far pretty honest reviews.
IDfreeze might be fighting for a good cause but this is not a place to promote it.
Looks basically like an insurance policy. This company is banking on not having to do any work for the majority of people and just collecting funds for doing nothing. It’s a good business strategy, I’ll give them that.
Agree with everyone above..
Guys, its not just this article. I have noticed a disturbing trend on TechCrunch lately. Let’s just leave it at that for now.
$96/year for a fuzzy approach to protecting your identity …
Trust me - This is important.
This concept of an “IDFreeze” is misleading. And before you shell out $7.95 a month, you should understand what you are getting (and not getting). I don’t have space to cover everything TrustedID claims to provide; here are a few highlights.
(1) They are selling you a monthly subscription to things you can do once for free, pretty easily. I’ll help you for FREE if you email me at tfragala-AT-gmail.com.
(2) Their Lender DoubleCheck™ (part of IDFreeze) is basically a credit alert, which every ID theft victim in the U.S. can do for free themselves. This is not something TrustedID has built—-it’s federal law. What TrustedID doesn’t tell you is that credit alerts are not even close to being foolproof. A credit alert does not obligate credit grantors to do anything—-it’s just a static note on your credit file that credit grantors MAY check if they choose to, when issuing credit in your name. Quite often it is ignored.
(3) TrustedID’s “Credit offer opt out” (part of IFreeze) is, once again, covered by federal law and something everyone can do for free, pretty easily.
(4) They also tout a service called “Credit Card Monitoring”, which they don’t explain. Is this the same as credit monitoring? It doesn’t seem to be, they use the term credit “card”. So either this is something else, or whoever wrote the web copy doesn’t understand how credit monitoring works. You HAVE to explain this stuff-—it’s too serious not to. And if it is credit monitoring, they don’t mention which bureaus it monitors (this is a MUST). Credit monitoring does not monitor your credit cards. And someone taking over your existing credit card, is not identity theft. It’s credit card fraud and it’s the least of your worries in this area: Visa, MasterCard and Discover all voluntarily provide zero-liability. On top of that, federal law limits your liability to no more than $50 (the Fair Credit Billing Act).
(5) And if they don’t offer credit monitoring, they should. That’s something everyone in this very crowded space is doing. Experian just launched complete three bureau credit monitoring for $4.95 per month!
All in all, their web site portrays them in a very poor light. It’s misleading, vague and does not explain some absolutely critical things to consumers who are very wary about getting burned. If they have a great service, that’s a shame.
The most important warning I can give everyone is: in order to get this service, you have to hand over your entire life to TrustedID (your name, SSN, accounts numbers, etc) for all this to work. This is the dirty secret behind all the fanfare. How secure is their network, servers and database? Have their employees had criminal and financial background checks? Did the employees agree in writing to allow ongoing background checks, too (that is critical, not just when you are hired). This doesn’t just apply to TrustedID—-it’s every company offering services like this.
All in all, $7.95 a month (forever?) is quitea bit to pay for a lot of these things you only need to do one time (or irregularly) and most of which you can do for free.
I should disclose: I am a trained victim counselor with the non-profit ID Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org). I have run the first ID theft blog (www.scamsafe.com) since February 2004 and its follow on (http://blog.trustoncorp.com). I have also built a web-based service that will provide FREE identity theft and fraud recovery. There’s no advertising and no sensitive personal information needed. Our service is in private beta right now and is launching this month (www.trustoncorp.com).
I hope this isn’t taken as a personal attack on TrustedID. I bet they’re good people–no question they’re super smart. I’d love to learn more about what they are doing. And if I am totally wrong about something here I’ll post a follow up on my blog.
TrustedIDidn’t
I almost signed up just to stop the pre approved credit card offers, I stopped when I read this part of the terms.
“You both acknowledge and agree that if First Advantage Membership Services, Inc. and its affiliate First Advantage CREDCO, LLC (collectively, “FAMS”) become Representatives of TrustedID, that FAMS may use information it obtains about or from You for its business purposes.”
‘business purposes’, I guess that pretty much covers anything.
Mike,
Are you doing paid PR for those guys?
Fred
Such a lame review of a site with such questionable value. Contact details don\’t even give a street address. What is with that totally out of context picture in this article?
Yeah, guys, this is hardly the first time that TechCrunch has tossed up a meatball of product review. In fact, I’d say it’s more the norm than the exception. It just normally doesn’t seem like such a big deal when the product in question is some free Ajax-enabled Web toy.
Couple this with the fact that Techcrunch actively censors comments that don’t toe the party line, and this site is pretty rapidly becoming the Web 2.0 version of PR Newswire.
Yeah, maybe somebody stole the identity of Michael Arrington and now blog on his blog instead of himself
Crappy PR, Michael, I don’t read TechCrunch for this.
Finally, people see in this post what has been going on for months on this blog?
I’m finally unsubscribing from this blog in my newsreader and will no longer click on any links to it.
Sad.
I am new to this blog. So, if you are interested, in whom I am. You can find information here: http://www.linkedin/in/jpasquale
IdM has long been on the radar screen for many. Moreover, this announcement yesterday by this company plays into to it. My take is it’s an ASP or for aiding in watching ones identity on the net. But really really weak at best, as many have stated little information other than 7.95 a month and here’s what you get.
As social networks become more popular and used for that matter. People will be required and in many cases as they do today already to expose more information about themselves than ever before. Ever spend anytime on myspace or any other of these Teen ( I use the word loosely) social networks. Actually when you think about it, where the heck does all that information in forms we fill out go, who else see it, why isn’t there a way to control it. Just how many webservers have information about you? Perhaps things like RoboForms help and even this announcement, which I agree with everyone else wasn’t very detailed and certainly didn’t give me the warm and fuzzies….. about the company help IdM. We still need more solutions that subscribe to efforts like the Project Higgins (which had a coming out party last night, and no I wasn’t there) and even MS’s InfoCard that are really embracing an identity metasystem as a basis. What becomes interesting is how do we build that identity eco-system on a person-by-person bases as in user centric and who owns it. If these kinds of thing are important or even, interest this blog. I’d suggest taking a visit to SXIP and listen to Dick Harte [Hardt] than you might want to take a quick click over to the Eclipse Foundation and drill into Higgins. Maybe IdFreeze is another means to the an end. I don’t think it will ever gain traction, especially if the marketing doesn’t change, but it is yet another start to an important issue.
Don’t like the endorsement, it didn’t seem too sincere.
FWIW, you can call the credit report companies and issue a freeze on your own accounts for free. This prevents anyone from opening an account in your name without your verbal acknowledgement. This goes a long way to stopping fraudulent accounts from being opened up.
As for accounts that you currently have, I don’t see how what TrustedID does that can really help out in those cases. I generally just call the bank and deny those charges.
“Scott Mitic here, co-founder of TrustedID. This feedback has been really helpful - thank you all for the questions and interest. We’ll be adding more information on the company to the TrustedID site ASAP - you’ll see bios, address, internal security policies up there very soon. Just for background, I was previously the VP of Biz Dev at Fair Isaac’s consumer division, myFICO, and my co-founder, Omar Ahmad, was the CIO for Napster, and was also the webmaster for Netscape and Discovery Channel Online. You can reach me at scott *at* trustedid *dot* com - please get in touch.”
Heh, so let me get this straight. You just dropped references for both you and your co-founder to tell us that you aren’t just any JoeDoes off the street.
So your co-founder was the _webmaster_ for Netscape? Are you fucking kidding me? Am I supposed to be all relaxed now knowing that one of the executives for this company used to be a webmonkey for netscape.com?
Give me a fucking break. If you are so intimate with the inner workings of this industry, why didn’t the website contain proper information to begin with?
This is a joke, except it’s not funny.
“If you are in another state, they will put a flag on your credit report that requires companies issuing you credit to contact you separately and verify that you intend to open a credit account.”
Um, a phone call to any of the three credit bureaus does this (and they pass it along to the other two). I did this a couple months ago — without a website! without a paid subscription to a website!!
According to TrustedID’s press release, it was “founded in 2005.” In fact, it is a Delaware corporation, incorporated 7/30/2004 as True Identity, Inc., which filed its Statement & Designation by Foreign Corporation in California on 12/22/2004, showing an address in Palo Alto, California, and indicating Omar Ahmad as its President and agent for service of process. The corporation changed its name to TrustedID, Inc., on 6/14/2005 in Delaware and on 11/14/2005 in California.
According to the Delaware Secretary of State, it has not yet paid its annual franchise taxes for 2005 and has not filed its annual report since 2004.
Its press release indicates that its offices are in Redwood City, California. The company has not made the required filing with the Secretary of State to reflect any change in its address.
TrustedID frustrates the public’s ability to identify the the registrant for its domain name by using a registration proxy (Domains By Proxy, Inc.) with the trademark, “Your identity is nobody’s business but ours®.”
Even before reaching the merits of its service offerings, I have serious reservations about trusting my personal identifying information to a company that is not transparent (as demonstrated above and in preceding comments), that has not complied with its corporate filing obligations, and that has not paid its taxes. It seems that Mr. Arrington did not do his homework before recommending that “everyone in the U.S. strongly consider using this service.”
I guess people are starting to see Arrington for who he really is… I sent him a comment several months ago and got a VERY off-color response because I voiced disagreement about some crap he posted, ya’ll watch out or you’ll get on the “Top 10 Bad Blogs List” lol.
Seems to me like it might be in TrustedID’s best interest to ask for a refund and pull this article. Some things they did not think of:
Geeks value their privacy probably more than crooked politicians.
Geeks trust internet companies like they trust crooked politicians.
Geeks can “find shit out” about any entity, especially an internet company.
Geeks see a phrase like “everyone in the U.S. strongly consider using this service” and wonder, based on previous great-and-optomistic-yet-journalistically-responsible posts & reviews, whether the author was drunk, sleep deprived, or paid.
[…] Some readers are questioning the quality and the neutrality of yesterday’s post on TrustedID - This is Important. […]
The last time I saw this kind of concentrated, anonymous slamming was on a post I did about Tello a month or two ago. I left the comments up on that post and I am going to do the same here. The hatred and false accusastions expressed in these comments just don’t make any sense at all - and therefore there must be some alternate agenda going on. It’s interesting, at the very least.
Yeah, conspiracy indeed.
This post looks absolutely insincere to me and some other readers of yours (see comments).
Michael: You don’t address any of the questions or issues raised in any of the comments. Whilst some of them are ’slams’, many of them make valid points. Don’t you think they warrant answering?
I’m disappointed that a negative reaction to this kind of service is taken as an “agenda”.
I’d recommend that people read http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/con_minimize.htm
on how to deal with identity theft. Included in that is a quote “Some companies offer insurance or similar products that claim to give you protection against the costs associated with resolving an identity theft case. Be aware that most creditors will only deal with you to resolve problems, so the insurance company in most cases will not be able to reduce that burden. As with any product or service, make sure you understand what you’re getting before you buy. If you decide to buy an identity theft insurance product, check out the company with your local Better Business Bureau, consumer protection agency and state Attorney General to see if they have any complaints on file”.
On the positive side, I checked their BBB report and they didn’t have any complaints. http://www.goldengatebbb.org/commonreport.html?bid=76356
My comments were overly harsh– last thing I’d want to do is discourage you from keeping doing what you’re doing. Just realize that I for one found the flavor of this posting a bit sour, more an endorsement than a “hey check this out”. I apologize for the tone of my previous comment.
Additionally, if you were indeed being sincere about the thing, I can see how all the negative comments would sound like some sort of agenda.
I would like to learn more about the alternate agenda. Are there details?
This makes me wonder about the degree of objectivity in Techcrunch previous entries…how long have you been doing paid PR???
Well, hey, this was fun.
Mike, You are shadey and without a doubt have an agenda. This is clear. Your a pumper. Sounds like you have a vested interest. You should really put some effort into disclosures. How much money do these companies pay you. jerk so much for being credible.
Ok - I am “shadey”, have an agenda, a “pumper”, a vested interest, and a jerk.
Great. Thanks John. Carry on.
Please send me an email and tell me what I did to piss you off so that I can apologize. I swear, I didn’t mean it.
And to be clear, I do not take money or any other consideration to write posts.
Nick - #32 -
Ok. Let me try.
I think I got excited about the service because identity theft something I worry about a lot. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but it has happened to friends and I’ve seen how it really hurt them - literally years of pain to clean things up, broken relationships, etc.
I think that a lot of companies, like credit bureaus and credit issuers, have an interest in keeping things the way they are - easy credit, don’t worry about the costs to consumers of id theft because it doesn’t affect their bottom line.
I think many of our representatives in Congress are beholden to these credit bureaus and issuers because they spend massive amounts of money lobbying them. The legislation before congress right now is horrible and hurts us - and many our our representatives don’t care.
Trusted ID, a for profit venture, is doing something about it - both spending their own money lobbying to kill this legislation as well as helping us protect ourselves as best we can under current laws. I don’t have the time to fill out the paperwork, send in certified mail and pay the various fees necessary to freeze new credit issuances under my name. Trusted ID will do this for me for $8 per month. That seems like a very valuable service that a lot of people would be interested in and would make a highly positive impact on their life. That’s why I wrote the glowing review and stick by it.
I also added an update to the main post above, at the end.
Michael, I’ll never be able to grasp your smug response towards people who disagree with you. It’s maddening that you always see fit to dismiss contrary comments rather than engaging them.
You’re accusing the commenters of having an “alternate agenda?” What does that even mean? Why don’t you try being explicit, rather than arguing through innuendo. Better yet, why not try addressing the substantive criticisms people have made.
And finally: get off your high horse about anonymous comments. Maybe people choose to remain anonymous because you make them feel unwelcome with your snippy responses to their comments. Or maybe they’re simply smart enough to know that it’s a sucker’s game to argue with the person standing on the soapbox.
Hi Mike,
Just remember that the vast majority of us love you and your work. Keep it up and ignore the complainers and haters.
Best,
Dion Hinchcliffe
Lets be honest most people come here to click on the links to websites with fancy technology, to get ideas for our own pet-projects.
The actual analysis of the underlying *businesses* has always been rather lightweight but in some instances just pure fluff.
I’d also second comment #42.
Hey Mike,
There is no hidden agenda. I would say that most of the reader comments are legit. I didn’t comment earlier because I was waiting for your response.
It makes no difference to me whether you are compensated from the companies you promote on Techcrunch or not. You say you aren’t and I believe you. To be honest, I think you should and could be compensated. I always say reader beware.
I am more interested in what you bring to the table as far as the product and or company. I form my own opinion. Your insights are appreciated, but not taken at face value exclusively.
When you get this type of reaction from readers it just validates that Techcrunch is being taken seriously. You are not a MSM reporter who has to stay neutral, and that’s what I like about TC. I think you thrive on that flexibility and freedom.
Here are my Dads 3 rules for success:
1. Have fun (Which you do)
2. Keep your sense of humor (Isolatr?)
3. Don’t take it personal (Even if it is)
pvtbfs
Jimmy, #42 - if my comment, no 40, was smug and dismissive, then i just can’t do any better. I really tried to just write why I like the service.