Security with A.I.

WilliamM2 wrote: »

treitz3 wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to type all of that out, John. Honestly, I am more worried about someone stealing my identity and taking out 5 mortgages on my house, then finding out near foreclosure that it happened.

Freeze all your credit. After the Equifax breach in 2014 (IIR), we froze all of our credit. even with lesser known bureaus.
Equifax, Transunion, Experian, Chex systems, and Innovis. There may be more I forgot.
I can't even get my own credit report without unlocking one of them.
That's enough to stop anyone trying to get a mortgages or car loan in our names. Not much else you can do.

That's a bit excessive.

Sure, there's lots of people out there like Dave Ramsay who swear up and down that credit cards and the credit market serve no good purpose for the average joe and they should exit post haste live by the cash is king mantra. But, unless you are independently wealthy and can pay cash for everything, you need credit.

Freezing your credit does more damage that one thinks too. Nobody can open a new account under you but nobody can report on your old/existing accounts either. No big deal until you need to unlock your credit. Sure, it means you have your credit available to you again but it can take as much as 6 months for any recorded credit history with your current creditors to be available to new creditors on your credit report. That ends up being a big delay or even outright denial if you need to get a line of credit from something as simple as a store credit card to a mortgage, it can really kill the deal on you. For example, storm damage destroys your roof, insurance company denies the claim says you didn't have a "wind damage rider" so you need $20K like yesterday. Hey, bank of cool guy, can I get a loan for $20K. Sure, dude, lets take a look at your cre....welp, it's frozen, that's a no go. Sorry, man, unfreeze your credit and we can help you. UGH! That's going to take MONTHS and my roof is like swiss cheese NOW! Oh well, too bad, so sad, sucks to be you, exit is on the left, honcho, have a good day.

Credit freezes weren't meant to be a permanent way to handle credit. They often come with flags on your credit report so that if any attempt, even you, happens where a line of credit is attempting to be established, it'll start a legal process and potential fraud investigation. Credit freezes are intended to be used when you believe that there is a real and present threat to your credit. Something like a lost wallet internationally, a potential stolen identity or some level of fraud like a spouse or business partner trying to establish credit in your name.

Freezes, though, don't stop fraudulent mortgages from being issued on your property. That's deed theft and it's not as prevalent as certain commercials would have you believe. What deed theft is concerns the named owner of the house, not their credit. They forge some documents or get you to sign fraudulent documents under duress and then go file a deed transfer, often times a "quit deed" which requires no financial information at all, it's pretty much claiming a property in abandonment and exists so banks can get out from under a foreclosed property. Anyway, they get your deed registered in their name and then take out mortgages on it, take the money and leave you hanging. Your credit doesn't get touched, at all. Most people don't know it happens because the nefarious evil doer has the mortgage docs sent to a different address and you don't even see it on your credit report. You know when the eviction notices and foreclosure notices start coming to the house because they are required by law to send that stuff to the property location address as well as the business address. So a credit watch would never show a deed theft. Since it's near impossible to do on a mortgaged house underwritten by a bank, you wouldn't even get a default notice on a mortgage because the mortgage was never in your name just against your property as collateral. Is it on the rise? Yes. But, in 2023 there was a little over 9500 cases nationwide. You hear the 600% increase number but that's from 2015 to 2026. It's only been on the rise because consumer level computing, optics and imaging tools have gotten significantly better. Between 2019 and 2023 there was less than 60K cases nationwide. That's not even 12K a year. There's 147 million houses in the United States. So yes, the number has increased but it still substantially rare in the grand scheme of things. Of those title fraud cases, less than 10% were done against an occupied house and they involved some level of phishing and deception on someone like an elderly owner. The vast majority were on vacant properties, properties in probate due to will disputes or other inheritor negligence on dealing with the property, foreclosures and rental properties that are seasonal and vacant for a significant portion of the year.

Additionally, States have procedures in place that make deed theft difficult. Some States, like New York and Michigan, have more lax requirements for things like "quit deeds" that make it easier to forge and transfer the title than others but many states require, also, a tax transfer form that requires direct, in-person, notary witnessing for both parties of the deed transfer. Additionally, the feds and every state has services for tax notices that you can sign up for for free. Does this mean we're all safe? Nope. You should take every precaution you feel is necessary but if you have a mortgage, you don't have the deed to your house so you don't need deed/title insurance. In fact, it's probably part of your PMI, read your fine print. The bank does have your deed and they are on top of it. If you own your house outright, no mortgages or liens, get title insurance.

As far as what you can do without a freeze, it's simple really. Every credit reporting agency has notification capabilities now. Sign up for it. You will get immediate notification of any credit report request. Check out your bank, see if they have credit monitoring services for you. 'Cause it's way cheaper for them to pay for the monitoring service for you than to eat the fraud that was foisted upon you.

What big retail is trying to do now, though, is to use those new carts where they scan and price stuff as you put it in the cart and then they charge your account? Yeah, you need an app to use that and the fine print of that app says they are mining your personal data.

I refuse to use these so called store apps to get "digital" coupons to save .30 cents, Fvck it, I'll pay the .30 cents. The amount of intrusive crud that comes along with these so called "apps" is over the top. I do not need more stuff in the background mining information about my personal purchases or buying habits. Heck I've had to stop Sams Club from sending me "It's time to buy these things now" I started getting stuff sent to my email account telling me I need to buy more or that they have already compiled a shopping list for me. I do not need your help making a list of things I need, NOT things you think I need. Besides I go there to get items in bulk that I do not need to worry about gong bad. They seem to think I need the conga huge jug of laundry detergent every week. The damn thing lasts me more than a month.