We’re all experiencing anxiety (or outright panic) in the face of diminishing job security, escalating interest rates and sinking home values. I hate to add to the daily financial sturm und drang—and I beg your forgiveness—but you need to know about the increasing risk of identity theft related to data breaches and this recession.

The threat comes from those who are unemployed and desperate; those who are bitter about imminent layoff or job loss; and a shrinking workforce that can’t maintain security as they perform work with fewer resources. In fact, there were 47% more data breaches in 2008 than in 2007.

If there’s a silver lining to be found in our ailing economy, it’s the abundance of sales and discounts currently available to consumers. Home sellers, car dealers, restaurants and retailers are all trying to lure nervous customers to their goods with ever deepening savings. Of course, some of us have always been reluctant to pay full price for any products or services. Canny consumers pride themselves on their parsimony and insider information on where to find the best deals.

If you count yourself among this elite, penny-wise club, or want to, you should know about LifeLock’s identity theft service and their promotional codes for discounted services. LifeLock is the ID theft service chosen by nearly 1.5 million Americans because of their comprehensive and innovative strategies. And, the fact that 93% of their members choose to renew after their initial enrollment is a testament to LifeLock’s customer service.

Visit LifeLock.com and enroll using the LifeLock promo code DEFENSE to get the lowest price AND 30 days of free services.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites

As of January 2009, 11.6 million Americans are unemployed, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jobs are hard to come by these days, and job seekers are desperately applying a shotgun approach, using headhunters, professional networking and a number of online job sites.

Unfortunately, rather than becoming full-time employees, many applicants may become identity theft victims instead.

Scammers have been known to use information from applicants’ online resume to contact them and conduct bogus phone interviews. After the interview the scammer enthusiastically expresses an interest in hiring the applicant and requests the applicants’ Social Security number and driver’s license number under the guise of conducting a pre-employment background check.

What they’re really doing is using all that information to steal the job seeker’s identity to obtain credit.

Underscoring the need for caution while job searching is news that the online job search site Monster.com was hacked in January. More than 75 million people use Monster.com and the federal job site USAJobs.gov that is run by Monster.com’s parent company, Monster Worldwide Inc.

Pam Dixon, a privacy expert who runs the World Privacy Forum offers these tips to those using online job sites:

Use only your first initial and last name on your resume.
Do not include your phone number or address.
Use a new email account as contact information.

In addition, conduct extensive research on any companies that express an interest in hiring you. Contact the company’s human resources department to confirm that the person posing as the interviewer is employed there.

In such a challenging employment climate it’s easy to understand why a job searcher would throw caution to the wind, but there are worse things than being unemployed. For instance, being unemployed and contacted by collection agencies demanding payment for credit card accounts you never opened.

It’s hard to justify new expenses when you’re unemployed, but for only $9 a month LifeLock will help you protect your credit, reputation and your finances. Simply visit LifeLock.com and enroll using the promotion code DEFENSE to receive the lowest rate and 30 days of free services.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites

There’s a reason bloggers like me are always harping about the need for identity theft services like those offered by LifeLock: it’s because so many nitwits are in charge of your personal information.

Before I begin my rant, let me start by saying the folks in the Madison, Wisconsin Human Resources Department are probably good people. Like their imaginary Minnesota neighbors of Lake Wobegon, they’re probably a bunch of strong women, good-looking men and the parents of above-average children.

But how did their kids get so darned smart if their parents are nitwits?

This week the city’s HR department announced that a laptop was stolen from a city office, and on the laptop were the names, Social Security numbers and photos of somewhere between 300 and 500 municipal employees who had new job ID cards printed between 2004 and 2007.

First off: Why was the laptop left in an unlocked room used for job applicant testing, new employee orientations and the photographing of all employees needing new ID cards? Secondly, which boneheaded city employee is responsible for storing unencrypted personnel files on a laptop? Finally, why don’t they at least know how many and which employees’ personal information was stored on the laptop?

HR director Brad Wirtz said he recognized that storing such information on a portable computer in a room so easily accessible by so many people was a “bad practice” when his own new ID was printed in 2007. When the city switched to a new practice of identifying employees by their email addresses, they thought the Social Security numbers would be “phased out” as employees were issued new cards.

He was wrong.

“We just didn’t think the computer was going to be stolen,” Wirtz said.

He was wrong about that, too.

The laptop has since been recovered, and police say the data was never accessed.

Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about LifeLock’s ID theft services. Enroll using the LifeLock promo code DEFENSE to get the lowest price and 30 days of free protection. And, take this friendly advice: do it soon … before some nitwit renders you vulnerable to identity theft.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The lives of America’s military men and women are at risk everyday while they serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently, their identities are on the line, too.

Chris Ogle of New Zealand bought a second-hand MP3 player for $9 while visiting an Oklahoma thrift store last year. He never could get the darn thing to download songs from the Internet, maybe because it already held so many U.S. military files.

Among the “confidential” Department of Defense information are lists of equipment sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, military briefings, and the names, home addresses, cell phone numbers and Social Security numbers of hundreds of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the latest in a string of data security failures affecting servicemen and women. In 2006 a laptop computer containing extensive personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 28.6 million current and former military members was stolen from a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs employee’s home.

In 2007 a computer containing the Social Security numbers of 185,000 current and former military members was found in the home of an auditor who had been employed by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

In an interview with CNN, Pentagon officials said they knew about the MP3 player, but refused to discuss it until it was confirmed that the information actually did come from the U.S. Department of Defense.

LifeLock provides identity theft services to nearly 1.5 million Americans. Visit their website at LifeLock.com to learn more about their comprehensive and innovative strategies. Enroll using the LifeLock promo code DEFENSE for the lowest price available and 30 days of free service.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Identity theft stories don’t get much freakier than this one from Annapolis, MD. And, making it worse, the guy responsible is out on bond and probably reprising his act.

OK, here’s the story of the identity theft crime allegedly committed by Thomas Calvin Eichelberger:

Last September Eichelberger entered into a job contract with a man we’ll call Bob (because, trust me, “Bob” doesn’t want anyone linking him to this story). Afterwards, they stopped by a gas station where Eichelberger bought Bob a cappuccino. After he drank the coffee, Bob said he started feeling lightheaded, but the two went on to have a few drinks at a local restaurant and then went back to Eichelberger’s place where they had a couple more drinks and Bob got sick.

When Bob comes to, he finds himself naked on Eichelberger’s bed while his host sits clothed in a chair looking at him. Bob hung around a little longer, found a camera under Eichelberger’s bed and got sick again. Can you guess what was on the camera? Good guess! The camera held pictures of Bob and Bob’s naked butt.

Bob went home and told his wife and mother-in-law what happened. (I have to laugh at this part of the story; can’t you just picture it!) By this time Bob was feeling lousy enough that he went to the hospital, where doctors found opiates in his blood. Bob says he doesn’t take drugs.

A month later Bob checked his credit report and—big surprise—someone had taken out a couple new credit cards in his name, but the bills were being sent to Eichelberger’s address.

This is when Bob finally, finally wises up and calls the police. The cops search Eichelberger’s home and find marijuana, cocaine and an email for Bob in which he threatens to send the nudie pics to Bob’s attorney.

Eichelberger was arrested December 1, and charged with tampering with food and drink, second-degree assault, coke and marijuana possession and two counts of identity theft.

And this is where I’d like to send out a big personal “thank you” to Baltimore County, MD for letting Eichelberger lose on a $100,000 bond.

I’m sure a lot of freaks seem like very nice people, the kind of people nice enough to buy you a cup of coffee from a gas station. In the entire world there might not be another identity story like this one, but Eichelberger is still out there, and probably hundreds more like him.

Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about their identity theft services. Enroll using LifeLock promotional code DEFENSE to get the lowest possible price and 30 days of free service.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you’ve been thinking about how to mitigate your chances of becoming an identity theft victim, but don’t want to pay a lot of money for an identity theft program, LifeLock discounts are the answer.

Though it’s true you can place fraud alerts and obtain your credit reports without assistance or fees, it’s also true that you get what you pay for.

A fraud alert is available to anyone who has been a victim of identity theft, or has good reason to think they might become one, but the fraud alerts are good for only 90 days and if they remain necessary, must be renewed. Few people ever place the alerts in the first place, and still fewer are vigilant about their 90-day renewals.

When you become a LifeLock customer, they’ll immediately have a fraud alert placed for you (if you need it), and automatically renew them unless you tell them not to.

But fraud alerts are only a small part of effective identity theft service. That’s why LifeLock provides services that protect you from the most common identity theft threats—stolen mail, lost or stolen wallets, fraudulent address changes and Internet rings that buy and sell large parcels of stolen identities.

With the LifeLock discounts you receive 30 days of comprehensive protection, and then pay only $9 a month for continued services. Use the LifeLock discount code Defense to get this special price.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

Visit LifeLock.com today and learn more about the innovative services that have made them the choice of nearly 1.5 million members.

Click Here To Bookmark It

Hide Sites