New Privacy Tool Available to Consumers

If you have ever wanted to give someone a way to call you, without giving out your real phone number, there are a couple of new services on the market that may interest you. They allow anyone to setup a disposable phone number to protect their privacy. Better yet, the cost is very reasonable.

MyPrivateLine.com and MyClassAdd.com both provide disposable, toll free numbers to anyone willing to pay for them. The services work like a debit card. You purchase minutes, usually in $5 increments. The amount you are billed per minute ranges from $0.15 to $0.20.

When you give someone access to your number, they dial it just like any other phone number. When you setup the service, you specify what personal phone number you want it to connect to. This means that if you can receive calls on your cell phone, home phone or even an office line without ever having to give out your real number.

There are a multitude of reasons that you may want to consider using a disposable phone number. If you publish information to a website, blog or personal home page, you may want to provide a phone number that you can easily disconnect. People who are victims of domestic violence may want to be able to provide a phone number to people that can’t be traced to a particular address. And people who still believe that personal privacy is important, may just want to use a service like this because they decide that their personal business is nobody else’s business.

One of the primary markets for disposable numbers is in the area of personal/classified ads and online dating. When placing these kinds of ads, many people would prefer the ability to keep their actual phone number private. With these new services they can.

The fact is that when you give out your phone number, you provide the recipient with a door to significantly more information about you. There area wide variety of free reverse directory services available on the internet. Using one of these services it can often be determined where you live.

Anyone willing to pay for a directory lookup can get even more information. This may include where you work, how much you make, how many children you have, what property you own and possibly your Social Security Number. There are many paid directory services that can provide this information with nothing more than a phone number, and at a cost of less that $100. Everything required to steal your identity.

These new services provide consumers with an easy and effective means to protect their privacy at a reasonable price.

Technorati Tags : privacy, privacy+rights, privacy+tools, personal+privacy, online+dating, classified+ads, identity+theft, financial+privacy

 

Bush Administration makes it Tougher for Consumers to Sue Companies

February 20, 2006 – Last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) approved new rules that make it tougher for consumers to file law suits against mattress manufacturers. And last month, the FDA imposed similar rules, making it more difficult for consumers to sue drug manufacturers. These are just the latest moves from an administration and Congress that appear to be doing everything that they can to stop state regulation of industry.

 

In 2004, Congress passed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) which stopped the states regulating how banks share customer information with their affiliate companies. Since then, both Congress and the administration have continued to push through laws that usurp state regulatory authority in favor of more relaxed federal standards. And they have done this despite repeated polling data that shows the vast majority of consumers disagree with them.

 

Yet, there is no sign that either the administration or Congress are about to change their ways. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration is now seeking to exempt automobile manufacturers from law suits for car rollovers. Specifically, they want to make it illegal for states to impose laws that require stronger automobile roofs than the federal government requires.

 

"Having a single federal standard is the best way to guarantee safety," said Brian Turmail, spokesperson for the Transportation Department.

 

But the trend is quite disturbing and may have significant ramifications where financial privacy and identity theft are concerned. There are no fewer than 19 bills in Congress right now to regulate data brokers and data collection practices. A good number of these bills would set a very weak federal standard for notifying consumers when their information is exposed to anyone who is not authorized to see it. In effect, the laws of 21 states with strict standards of consumer notification could be nullified.

 

This is precisely what happened in the case of FACTA. California had passed an extremely strong privacy law that would have prevented banks from sharing consumer information with affiliate companies if the consumer opted out of such sharing. Almost as soon as the law passed, lobbyists for the banking industry were in Washington, trying to get federal legislators to overrule it. They succeeded.

 

But the White House denies that it is trying to stop states from regulating certain industries. Decisions about federal preemption "are made agency-by-agency and rule-by-rule," said Alex Conant, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget. "Under the Constitution, federal laws take priority over inconsistent state laws." But this type of usurpation of states rights was clearly not the intent of the founders of this country. In fact, the Constitution specifically states that rights not reserved for the federal government are reserved for the states.

 

One of the great ironies of the new CPSC rule on mattress fires is that when adopting it, the CPSC also set higher standards for mattress safety. These standards are nearly identical to the standards set by California. And California’s standards were adopted as a result of a consumer law suit. In that case, a seven year old boy was burned over 85% of his body. A humidifier that had been near his bed malfunctioned, causing the initial fire. Investigators estimated that once his mattress caught fire, it only took two minutes for it to become fully engulfed.

 

Under the new standards, mattresses will have to limit the spread of a fire for up to 30 minutes. The CPSC expects that the new standards will eliminate 75% of injuries or deaths due to mattress fires. But if the new CPSC rule had been in effect prior to the law suit in California, it is doubtful that there would have been any further improvement in mattress safety.

 

One of the most disturbing aspects of this attack on states rights is that the federal legislators who are putting these laws in place know that they are doing so over the wishes of voters. They are clearly aware when voters at the state level implement new laws that they override.

 

The reason for this type of behavior is clear. Corporate campaign donations and perks. The unfortunate truth is that until it becomes illegal for legislators to take corporate donations, even in the form of “soft money”, the politicians in Washington will continue to do what they do best; exchange votes for cash. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen. Such laws require political courage; something is short supply in Washington.

 

Technorati Tags : George+W+Bush, Bush+Administration, consumer+rights, credit+rights, credit+law, privacy, privacy+rights, privacy+law, FTC, FDA, CPSC, FACTA, states+rights

27,000 Social Security Numbers Stolen from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida – An ACCESS Fraud Alert

An outside contractor for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida data on 27,000 customers and employees of the company. The data included Social Security Numbers.

 

The contractor, who has not been named due to an ongoing FBI investigation, had been given access to one of Blue Cross’s databases. That access was used to transfer the information from Blue Cross to other computers via e-mail. More than half of the stolen data belonged to current and former employees of the company.

 

Blue Cross has begun notifying those affected by the theft. This is the company’s second incident in twelve months, inadvertently exposing consumer data. In August, the company exposed the Social Security Numbers of 200 long term care patients in a mass mailing.

 

It should be noted that Blue Cross is made up of a number of different companies, all of which belong to the Blue Cross Association. Only Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida was involved with these data breaches.

 

If you have reason to believe that you may have been impacted by either of these breaches, you can Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida at 800-461-1719. The company has offered to pay for one year of credit monitoring for anyone whose data was involved.

 

ACCESS would like to remind its readers that all credit monitoring does is notify you when changes to your credit report occur. It does nothing to stop identity theft in the first place, or to help you repair your credit after an identity theft has occurred. Anyone accepting an offer of credit monitoring from any company who has exposed their data should read the fine print of the offer carefully. Make sure that you are not giving up any of your rights by accepting such an offer.

 

Technorati Tags : identity+theft, id+theft, data+breach, data+security, privacy, private, blue+cross, blue+shield, blue+cross+and+blue+shield, fraud, financial+privacy, privacy+law