Keeping an ID Theft Victim's Information Private is Catching On

Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston Identity Theft Services, started his MyTruston identity theft and recovery product based on the principle that he didn't believe an identity theft victim should have to give up their information to a third-party to protect themselves. After all, most of this information gets stored in a database, which is one of main places (besides trash cans) identity thieves go to steal information.

Information stored on databases is legitimately bought and sold by information brokers all the time. Criminals sometimes pose as having a legitimate interest to access the information. Of course, there have also been cases of dishonest employees selling it without a so-called legitimate purpose. This makes it extremely difficult to determine exactly where any stolen information originally came from. At this point in time, so much information has been stolen, we routinely hear about it being sold in chat rooms right over the Internet.

It didn't make sense to Tom to put all this information in another place, where it could potentially be compromised again. Databases have created an ability to store more information than ever before and transfer it with a click of a mouse.

Having been an identity theft victim himself, Tom had some rather personal feelings on the subject. It should also be mentioned that Tom has spent thousands of hours being a personal advocate for victims of this crime.

Since launching the do-it-yourself tool — where you don't have to be an expert to protect yourself or recover from identity theft — it has received numerous awards and become a hot topic within the technology industry itself. Besides not having to be an ID theft expert — you don't have to expose any of your personal information to a third party and the protection aspect is and always has been free. There is a charge for using the recovery tool, which can be cancelled anytime. I'll tell you a secret about that last statement, further down.

I discovered the latest news that the Truston concept is catching on when reading Tom's blog, which is well worth a read if you are interested in identity theft or privacy issues. "Today we announced that our MyTruston product has been included in the portfolio of the Affinion Security Center, the largest provider of identity protection and privacy services. Affinion has nearly 35 years of industry experience and over 65 million members of their many products. Clients of their identity protection and privacy products include Wells Fargo, Bank of America and The Hartford Insurance. Truston's Software-as-a-Service technology is deeply integrated within the Affinion Security Center’s core solution platform, IdentitySecure," according to Tom himself.

Just the day before, Truston also announced a partnership with CreditFYI, which is a one-stop shop for the best credit card rates, best loan rates, as well as, to learn how to protect your good name and credit rating.

Besides Affinion Group and CreditFYI, Truston is a private label partner with Identity Force, which provides identity theft protection services to the U.S. Government. Truston has been given a Four-Star rating by PC Magazine and has received several awards. "Truston's awards include a 2008 Product Innovation Award, a Hot Company 2008 Award, being selected for 10 Companies to Watch in 2008 by the Pacific Coast Business Times, the 2008 Tomorrow's Technology Today award, and it was identified as a leader by Javelin Strategy & Research in their December 2007 identity theft market report," according to the press releases.

If you are interested in just how user-friendly the tool is, the Truston site has a tour you can take.

I've also had the pleasure of speaking with Tom on several occasions and beta tested the tool myself before it rolled out. I've covered this in several blog posts on Tom and the MyTruston identity theft tool.

Now for the secret I promised earlier in the post. I mentioned that using the tool always has been and always will be free, but there is a nominal charge for using he recovery services. The secret is that if you go directly to the Truston site - you can use everything free for 45 days. Last, but not least, this free trial doesn't require you give them a credit card (which will get charged if you forget to cancel) until after the trial expires.

Identity Theft Service wins Network Products Guide 2008 Product Innovation Award

Tom Fragala announced on his blog that "Truston received a 2008 Product Innovation Award from Network Products Guide for our myTruston Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform."

Tom is a well known blogger on the subject of identity theft, was really a victim himself and has spent a lot of time advocating for victims.

He quoted Networks Product Guide as saying:

“Truston's innovative SaaS platform offers an organized approach to getting a stolen identity back and keeping it safe.

myTruston is the only ID theft product that does not require sensitive data, is the only SaaS product in the space, supports virtually all fraud types, has unlimited content extensibility, is built on a patent-pending task management engine and allows for seamless integration with partner's web sites.”

Truston is a platform that allows the individual to protect themselves and recover from identity theft without handing over their personal and financial information. Many of their competitors maintain this information in databases, which seem to be compromised, frequently.

Some of them also require you sign a power of attorney to use their service.

In fact, there is so much compromised information out there, no one is really sure how much there is. Finjan, a noted computer security company, has recently been finding crime servers containing a lot of stolen information that no one knew had been compromised before. Ironically, the owners of these crime servers didn't even bother to password protect them in certain instances.

Despite this, we read about known data breaches all the time.

This isn't the first award Truston has received from the Technology industry and I suspect it won't be the last.

The neat thing is that if you are reading this post, Tom is still offering a free 45 day trial. Of course, the protection part always has been free.

If you would like to try the services for free, click here.

Recently MyTruston created a partnership with Identity Force and their platform is now being used by government agencies. These include the Department of Veterans Affairs, FEMA, US Coast Guard, Transportation Safety Administration, and Department of Energy.

While identity theft is a growing problem and no one can protect themselves 100 percent, MyTruston offers a platform to do so that is at least as good (if not better) than anything else in the industry. If you see advertising for an identity service that is 100 percent bulletproof, I recommend exercising the sage principle of caveat emptor (buyer beware) before shelling out your hard-earned money.

The reason I say better is that it was built on principles that protect privacy and by an individual that wanted people to "trust" his product.

If you would like to learn more about MyTruston, their site has a FAQ page that answers a lot of questions.

Press release on this latest award, here.

Truston ID Theft protection and recovery platform rakes in another award!

It appears that Tom Fragala and the MyTruston team have raked in (yet) another award. This time from the Pacific Coast Business Times as one of the hot start-up companies coming from California's Central Coast.

Tom Fragala, Truston's CEO wrote on his blog, "This recognition comes on the heels of being named a 2008 Hot Company and receiving a technology award from the Info Security Products Guide."

Here is the reason why they were chosen:

Truston's MyTruston® service is the only fully online identity theft recovery system. It is web-based software that can help millions of people easily recover from and prevent identity fraud by supporting virtually any type of ID theft. MyTruston walks consumers step-by-step through the entire prevention or recovery process—dramatically reducing the time, financial cost, and emotional impact. And it can easily be embedded into a partner's own website on a private-label basis.

The press release also contains a comment from Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston:

“The Pacific Coast Business Times recognition of Truston as one of the hottest startups in Central California further validates our innovative products and strategy of offering our services to large partners in the identity theft, direct marketing and financial services markets,” said Tom Fragala, CEO and founder at Truston. “Superior technology and support for partners differentiates Truston from other companies in the identity theft protection market.”

Tom developed Truston based on his own personal experience as an identity theft victim and has spent thousands of hours assisting other victims of identity theft.

Because of this, coupled with the fact that he is selling this technology to large partners, he still takes care of us "little people" by offering a free 45 day trial (no credit card needed) of the Truston platform.

Saying that, I should mention that the platform has always protected people free of cost and only charges for using it to recover after a person is a confirmed identity theft victim. Most companies charge you right from the beginning and will only help you if you were paying at the time of the crime (pardon the pun). Many of them also require that you surrender all your personal details, which they maintain on a database. Information on databases are a favorite place for identity theft thieves to obtain the resources they need to commit their crimes.

There are some, who believe one of the root causes of identity theft is the multi-billion dollar business of buying and selling information, which is normally maintained in databases.

If you are interested in checking out the Truston platform while it is still free, I've provided a link, here.

Privacy friendly Truston ID Theft prevention/recovery platform wins 2008 Tech Award

After just being named a 2008 Hot Company, Tom Fragala and the Truston team have another award under their belt.

From the Marketwire press release:

Truston®, a provider of award-winning online services for identity theft protection, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, the world’s leading publication on security-related products and technologies, has named myTruston® a winner of the 2008 Tomorrow’s Technology Today Award.

Truston has largely been launched via word of mouth and doesn't offer a lot of gimmicks. What it provides is a DIY (do it yourself) method of protecting yourself and recovering from identity theft.

The press release describes the MyTruston technology:

MyTruston is the only fully online identity theft recovery system. It is hosted web-based software that can help millions of people easily recover from and prevent identity fraud by supporting virtually any type of ID theft. MyTruston walks consumers step-by-step through the entire prevention or recovery process—dramatically reducing the time, financial cost, and emotional impact. And it can easily be embedded into a partner's own website. To read more about this award winning technology, please visit www.infosecurityproductsguide.com/technology.

Tom Fragala, Truston's CEO, is amongst other things an actual identity theft victim, a blogger and spent thousands of hours advocating for identity theft victims before the his technology was launched.

He firmly believes in the basic information security principle that the less places information is stored, the less likely it is to be compromised. This is the reason that MyTruston never asks a person for any of their personal information.

Most identity theft protection services require you give them all your personal details and in some instances, a power of attorney. Given how information is bought and sold and with everything being outsourced to call centers that provide cheap labor, this is something that bears consideration.

Additionally, the prevention and "discovery" process is completely free-of-charge and the service only charges for using the software to recover from identity theft.

There is no long-term commitment to protect yourself.

Tom freely admits that a person can recover from identity theft, if they know how to do it and have the knowledge. One of the reasons there are so many players in the identity theft protection field is that most people find it confusing and difficult to get through all the red tape after becoming a victim.

What Truston provides is a free platform to discover the problem and an interactive means to effectively solve it without having to do a lot of research.

Marketwire press release on Truston's latest award, here.

If you want to test out the free portion (now includes a free trial) of MyTruston, here is a link.

Truston and Identity Force team up to provide identity theft protection/recovery services

Truston -- who provides a privacy and user friendly means to protect a person from identity theft -- has announced a partnership with Identity Force.

Truston allows a person to protect themselves without giving up any of the personal information that is normally used by identity thieves to commit a wide assortment of crimes. It also allows a person to protect themselves, as well as, find out if they have anything to be concerned about free-of-charge.

A person is only charged for using the service when they recover from identity theft and then is only charged for however long the process takes. This is a big difference from most identity theft protection/prevention services, who charge a person on a long-term basis regardless of whether or not they have been actually become an identity theft victim.

Many of the identity theft protection services do not cover a person unless they were signed up (and paying) at the time they became a victim.

In addition to this, the monthly charge for using the recovery services is about the same as most of the competition. Because the recovery services are used on an "as needed" basis, the overall cost of using Truston is far less than the competition.

Identity Force provides identity theft protection services to a large number of customers including government agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Education.

Because of this, Truston will now be available to a substantial customer base, many of whom, might not want to provide all their personal information to a third-party. Given that many of these people were referred to Identity Force after a data breach -- where a system was compromised and their information was exposed -- Truston provides an approach that might give them greater piece of mind.

Here is part of the announcement from the press release:

Truston, a provider of award-winning online services for identity theft protection, today announced that it has partnered with Identity Force to provide its customers with Truston's online identity theft recovery and prevention services.

As Truston's web-based platform is designed to be private-labeled by partners, the myTruston features will be offered through the Identity Force member dashboard and completely integrated for a seamless customer experience. Through the use of Truston's application programming interface, the myTruston service is embedded within the Identity Force website, taking on its look-and-feel and not requiring an additional user login.

Recently, Truston was named one of the Hot Companies of 2008 by the Network Products Guide in Silicon Valley.

Tom Fragala, Truston's CEO, was himself an identity theft victim and has spent thousands of hours advocating for victims of this growing crime.

He also does a blog on identity theft, which can be seen, here.

Full press release on the Truston/Identity Force partnership, here.

MyTruston points out the two most important TIPS to protect your identity this season!

Tom Fragala at MyTruston wrote an interesting post about the two most important things to do during the season to avoid having a grinch (identity thief) ruin it for you.

From the MyTruston blog:

There are a lot of lists about identity theft flying around this time of year. 12 tips of Christmas, top 10 ways to protect yourself from identity theft...that kind of thing.

Well, to save you time and keep things simple (less is better), I am going to boil it all down to two tips that most of you probably already do. But please, make sure you are diligent in keeping up on these.

Can you guess what they are? In case you aren’t sure, I’ve provided a link so you can see if you were right.

MyTruston, the first identity service that doesn’t require that you compromise your personal information is growing, also. Yesterday, they announced a partnership with Trend Micro Systems, a leading provider of security software.

MyTruston is offering their identity theft service on a free 90 day trial if you purchase a gift card from Trend Micro Systems. The gift card also offers a nice discount on their much talked about software.

The nice thing about the free trial period is that you don’t have to worry about forgetting to cancel the deal and having your credit card “crammed” with recurring charges.

I'm frequently amazed at who some of the companies are that employ this marketing practice (cramming).

Another nice thing about the MyTruston service is that the prevention part of the service has always been free and you only pay for the recovery services.

If you were to shop around, I think you would find it is the best value in the growing field of paid identity theft protection services.

And when spending your hard earned money, it always pays to check around.

Truston Identity Theft Services recognized as a 2008 Hot Companies Finalist

There are very few identity theft protection services that I TRUST one-hundred percent. The reason for this is most of them require that a victim, or even someone who wants to protect themselves from identity theft, provide them with all their personal information.

Some of them even require that you furnish them with a power of attorney, which is even scarier. In the wrong hands, a power of attorney would give the wrong person the ability to do a lot of damage to a name, or financial portfolio.

In the era of outsourcing and phone banks, not giving someone else control over your name and finances is something worthy of consideration. We never seem to know exactly, who is being given access to this information, anymore.

Most identity theft protection services take advantage of free services, which someone who had a fair amount of knowledge could do themselves. The problem is that a lot of people don't have the knowledge, or want something that makes it easy for them.

Truston addresses both these issues by allowing a person to keep their personal information personal and providing a user friendly platform to protect themselves, or if need be, recover from having their identity stolen.

The protection services are always free and if need be, the recovery procedures are a lot cheaper than anything else I've seen on the market. The recovery services are only $10 a month, and only need to be purchased for the time frame they are needed.

The majority of the services out there require a long-term commitment and have clauses (normally written in fine print) covering preexisting conditions.

Because of this, Truston and it's CEO, Tom Fragala have been named as a 2008 Hot Companies finalist by Silicon Valley Communications.

From the press release regarding this matter:

Truston, a provider of award-winning online services for identity theft protection and consumer credit management, announced that it has been named a 2008 Hot Companies finalist by Silicon Valley Communications. Truston was selected after a global analysis of information technology vendors around the world. Truston was chosen based on the "4Ps" selection criteria-Products, People, Performance, and Potential. The 2008 Hot Companies analysis encompassed companies in all areas of information technologies including security, wireless, storage, networking, software and communications.

The Hot Companies 2008 evaluation process also assessed candidates for entrepreneurial spirit, seasoned executives with relevant experience, clear understanding of their IT market segment, products and solutions that are positioned to take advantage of the emerging market opportunities, well developed revenue-growth model and clearly planned expansion strategies.

Tom Fragala, who has a background in the IT world was a identity theft victim himself, which prompted him to design a service that is both effective and privacy friendly.

He has also spent a lot of time as an advocate for identity theft victims and blogs on the subject, here.

Having known him for awhile through our mutual interests, I've done some other posts on Truston (which if anyone is interested) can be viewed, here.

MyTruston -- where you can see if someone is stealing your identity for free!

You won't get a million dollar guarantee and Tom Fragala's social security number if you decide to use myTruston identity theft prevention/recovery services. You also aren't going to get the paid endorsements for his product by Fred Thompson, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Howard Stern.

Tom, who is the CEO/Founder of MyTruston doesn't believe in buying endorsements, paying bloggers, or doing massive advertising campaigns to promote his service.

He trusts that once a prudent consumer looks at his product and the value it provides, the service sells itself.

Tom was an identity theft victim himself and has spent thousands of hours advocating for other victims. Many of the basic principles behind myTruston were based on both of these personal experiences.

What you get with myTruston is a "piece of mind" that if you have to protect yourself from identity theft -- your information isn't being exposed in another place -- where it might be compromised.

Preventing identity theft using myTruston is and always has been free, you only pay for the recovery services, if and when you need them.

Most identity theft services require that you provide them with all of your personal information, and in some instances, even your power of attorney.

With myTruston you can protect your identity, and if need be, recover from identity theft without giving up your information to a third-party.

With call centers being outsourced -- the possibility of insider theft, and hacking techniques that seem to routinely defeat current security technology -- this might be something to think about when protecting your identity and financial well-being.

All identity theft services bundle free services that theoretically could be done for free. It's a low overhead and immensely profitable business. The trick to it is making sure you do everything properly, and this is where a third-party service can add value.

The unique twist with Truston is that it's free to prevent identity theft and you only pay to recover from it. In other words, you don't pay for something that might never happen to you, which seems to be a common denominator with a lot of the services out there.

Many of the services out there charge $10.00 and up a month to protect you, which is free at myTruston. Many of them (also) do not cover you if you were compromised before you paid for their services (read the fine-print).

What Truston provides is an easy do-it-yourself (DIY) platform that makes it easy for the average person to ensure they are not being compromised, and take effective action if they have been.

Truston recently announced they were upgrading their service and lowering the cost of their paid (recovery) service. The paid portion of the service only needs to be used as long as the customer feels it is necessary.

Here is a portion of the announcement from their blog:

This week we released a new version of our award-winning myTruston service. The new features are FREE to current members for a 45–day free trial period. These four new prevention and privacy services are:

1. Credit bureau fraud alerts
2. Chexsystems fraud alerts
3. Stop pre-approved credit offers
4. Stop telemarketing calls

We updated our product names: we now have myTruston Free and myTruston Plus. myTruston Free has the same features since we first launched (inspecting your credit reports year round). myTruston Plus includes what you get with Free, the four new prevention/privacy features, and our ID theft recovery tools. Also, the price for the Plus service is reduced 50% to just $10 a month!

What I like about these new features is they begin to address the growing problem of synthetic identity theft. Synthetic identity theft occurs when different parts of people's identity are crafted to form another one. This is getting to be a big problem, which is expected to get worse.

In the near future, employers will have to take action when they have employees, who have social security numbers that don't match their names. In the past, this was never enforced, and social security numbers could be made up (literally).

With this new development, up to 20 million illegal immigrants are going to have to use social security numbers that match an identity. This could lead to an explosion in the already staggering amount of identity theft that is occurring.

Watching your identity carefully, is probably a better idea than ever before.

The Chexsystems alerts are a part of this new effort. Fraudulent checks that tie into identity assumptions do not always show up on credit reports.

In case you missed the Certegy data breach, where 8.5 million people's checking account information was compromised, this might be something that will help a few people out there. Please note this compromise was accomplished by a not very honest insider, therefore no amount of computer security could have stopped it.

Two other enhancements are the ability to put yourself on the no-call lists and stop all those pre-approved credit offers. Most privacy experts recommend we do this to avoid having our information sent all over the place.

Tom, whom I speak to on a semi-regular basis, has indicated that he and his team are working on even more enhancements to provide more value to his service in the future.

They are also working with industry partners to bundle their services and provide them as an option to a wider audience, who might want to a take a more private approach to preventing, or recovering from, identity theft.

I would highly recommend getting in touch with Truston if you are providing these services to your employees, or perhaps considering providing them to your customers.

Victims of identity theft are sometimes cautious about giving up their information after they've been victimized. MyTruston provides a viable solution for these customers, as well as, customers who are careful about protecting their privacy.

For the full announcement, which includes a free trial period for current customers on the paid services (you don't have to provide a credit card number, then remember to cancel)link, here.

I've noticed this is another neat marketing trick (requiring a credit card) employed by a lot of entities offering services for free lately. I suspect they count on busy and forgetful people like me, who forget to cancel the service.

PS: I got to know Tom from his blog and work as an advocate for identity theft victims. If you are interested in identity theft or privacy issues, I highly recommend you consider it as another free resource, he provides.

Equifax hires ID Thief

These days, identity theft is being used for more than to commit financial crimes. A woman in Georgia (Tonia Leach) discovered her identity was stolen after an inquiry showed up on her credit report from a temp agency and Equifax. The still not identified impostor used the woman’s identity to obtain employment at Equifax.

When I say the impostor used the identity for more than committing financial crimes, I didn’t mean the victim wasn’t left with a lot of financial liability, as a result of this occurence.

WSBTV.com (Georgia) reports:

The woman also opened credit cards in Leach’s name. Leach even got a bill from the IRS. Leach said her life has been turned upside-down.

When the creditors call, they call me at 6, 7, 8, 9, every hour of every day. They will call you because they want their money. It was horrible, said Leach.

Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting agencies made the following statement:

We can confirm that an individual posing as Ms. Leach was employed with Equifax for less than a year, beginning in early 2006. There were no indications with the identification information that she provided or through the work history or the credit report that this was a stolen identification.

Equifax also claims, the impostor didn’t have access to sensitive information, but the article doesn’t say exactly what she did, or if there was any sensitive information accessible where she worked?

After all, this person seems very adept at stealing information and it’s possible, she could have found ways to steal it, using other people’s access. Access codes and passwords are frequently compromised by dishonest employees, who intend to steal, or commit other misdeeds.

If you are interested in how easy it is to get all the documents necessary to pose as someone else, I did a post about Suad Leija, who has shared a lot of information on this subject:

Paper weapons (counterfeit documents) enable more serious crimes than illegal immigration and identity theft

With the amount of stolen identities, backed up by easily available counterfeit documents, we can expect to see more people obtaining employment using someone else's information.

Most identity theft experts recommend you check your credit report at least once a year. It's a good idea to pay attention to what inquiries have been made and be wary if you don't recognize, who has been making inquiries into your credit.

Tom Fragala at MyTruston, who is a fellow blogger, provides an easy to use method to check to see if you are a victim of identity theft. Checking to see if you are a victim is always free and you only pay if you choose to use his recovery services. The recovery services are cheaper than anything I've seen out there, thus far.

MyTruston is also "privacy friendly," which means you don't have to give up your personal information to be stored in someone else's database. Identities are stolen from databases, pretty frequently.

You can link to MyTruston, here.

WSBTV.com story, here.

MyTruston, a privacy friendly identity theft prevention/recovery service based on trust

Tom Fragala, CEO of MyTruston (Identity Theft Prevention and Recovery Services) has created a service for identity theft victims, where they don't have to put all their personal information (which was used to steal money) on another database.

This makes a lot of sense, when databases seem to be compromised, weekly. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has ample evidence supporting this in their chronology of data breaches, here.

The concept behind MyTruston is that preventing identity theft should be free. People only have to pay (if and when) they become a victim, and only do so, while in the recovery process.

In a recent conversation with Tom, I asked him what would happen if someone suspended the service, and changed their mind, later. He told me that the system would retain all their information, and they could start all over (as if they never left). Since identity theft can (raise it's ugly head over and over again) when new fraudulent accounts are opened, this is a pretty customer friendly feature.

Most of the current identity theft services count on a person paying for them over a long period of time, whether they use it, or not. In fact, these services are probably betting on making a lot of money from people, who never use them.

Additionally, with most of these services, you aren't covered unless you've paid the up-front premiums.

With MyTruston, the prevention part is free, and if you need to recover; you'll spend a lot less money and do it the right way (the first time). For $19.99 a month, that's a pretty fair deal.

There must be a lot of people not buying some of the current services on the market. Out of 205 million active credit customers, less than 5 percent subscribe to a service. This tells me that a lot of people aren't buying some of the services out there, but still might benefit from one.

Studies indicate that 1 in 5 of us has been a victim of identity theft in the past five years. People need to be able to go somewhere, they can both trust and takes care of the problem at a reasonable price.

MyTruston delivers this, and the service was designed by someone (Tom Fragala), who had a personal experience with identity theft. Many of the key principles behind the service, were based on his experience (as well as) more than a 1000 hours helping other victims.

The service is easy to use (I tested it myself) and it walked me through each recovery step. A person can stop in the process anywhere, and it automatically reminds you where you left off.

Tom is currently working on developing protection for more sophisticated forms of identity theft, and plans to roll them out in the near future. These forms of identity theft, which sometimes aren't very apparent, have been the subject of a lot of speculation, recently.

Identity theft is a problem that isn't going to disappear very soon.

Given current trends, Thomas Harkin (former director of Mastercards fraud division) recently predicted the problem could grow as much as 20 times in a USA Today article. One of the reasons for this is only an estimated 6 out of a 100 criminals stealing people's identities ever get convicted.

You can take a look at MyTruston, here.

Tom is also a fellow blogger, and covers this subject (identity theft) on his blog. I read and link to what he says, frequently.

An Identity Theft Protection and Recovery Service Based on Trust

The new identity theft protection and recovery service by Truston is live. The service is unique because it doesn't require you to give up your personal information, which could be stored in a database, and used to commit identity theft if it falls into the wrong hands.

In case you've missed the weekly stories, databases are being compromised all the time and according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (which is keeping tabs), 97,326,222 people in the United States have been compromised by data-breaches since February, 2005.

I probably need to make a disclaimer that this number might grow before I publish this post. Nonetheless, here are the ugly statistics as of this writing.

Tom Fragala, who is the CEO and a former identity theft victim himself did a great post on his blog describing the service:

myTruston is a web-based service that protects you from identity theft. It is simple and safe.

How simple? One minute sign up. And myTruston works by providing you a recipe-like format, one task at a time, for dealing with identity theft. That goes for both prevention and recovering from fraud.

Why is it safe? Because our members never send us any confidential personal information. All we need is your email address to help you. Every other prevention and recovery service requires you to give them your name, address, SSN, and even power of attorney.

What does it cost? Our prevention services will always be free! And our recovery services are free until January 2007.

We’re getting some nice kudos from people. You can see an updated list here. One example:

"Very slick. You're a genius for coming up with something so simple yet effective & helpful. I'll definitely spread the word." - Jed Tucker, myTruston member

The bottom line is that finally we have a resource where someone can protect themselves and recover (if they are victimized) without putting themselves at additional risk.

And even I had no problem "navigating" it!

Here's the previous post, I did about myTruston:

Truston - An Identity Theft Service I Trust

If you would like to check out myTruston, link here.