by Doug Pollack

I’ll admit I’m a fan of Clark Howard. For those of you that don’t know him, he has a very popular radio show, The Clark Howard Show, and is a advocate for consumers in their financial affairs.

On today’s program, he became very animated talking about Freecreditreport.com. This is a website from one of the three large credit bureaus, Experian, that oddly enough requires that you pay for their service, despite the interesting name.

I thought that it would be useful to highlight some excerpts from his comments. He is obviously not a fan of this offering, and believes that their mass media advertising (who hasn’t seen the television ad with the kid in the seafood restaurant singing about his identity theft?) is deceptive.

The following are quotes from his show today:

“Freecreditreport.com, the ripoff non-service from Experian, is ripping you off, stealing money right out of your wallet…charing you a ripoff fee month after month after month”

“If you are currently subscribing to Freecreditreport.com, stop it! You are throwing your money away…why pay for it, they are liars at Experian. Liars, liars, liars.”

I have always found it amazing that Experian can advertise their service under that name when they require that you purchase their “triple advantage” service for a monthly fee of around $13 a month in order to get a “free” credit report. Maybe I just don’t have a good grasp of the english language. Doesn’t free, mean without cost?

Rebecca Seaman

Data breaches are on the rise, despite preventative measures such as state notification laws. Specifically, the Washington Post reports that data breaches reported by businesses, governments and universities are up 69 percent this year. Businesses alone accounted for a 27 percent increase in breaches, or one third of all those reported.

This may not be as alarming a trend as it may appear on the surface. In fact, it may be that businesses are simply more aware of breaches now that they know what to look for and have a better understanding of how breaches occur. Likewise, with the implementation of state notification laws, businesses may feel more compelled to report a breach than they were in the past.

Linda Foley, founder of The Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organization in San Diego, points out that “Part of this may be that organizations are finding out about more breaches because they’re really starting to look for them,” Foley said. “The other part is that companies are coming forward because they want to control the flow and spin of the disclosure.”

Regardless of how these breaches are occurring, businesses need to remain vigilant in preventing a breach, rather than focusing on damage control once a breach has occurred. Lost or stolen laptops remain the largest reported cause of business related breaches. They account for 20 percent of all reported cases, while hacking was the least cited. In other words, these breaches were largely preventable.  By making breach prevention a matter of policy (For example-evaluating risk and implementing tough cyber-security rules), businesses are less likely to experience a breach, and better prepared to manage one that does occur.