BNY Mellon....12 Million or more Identities lost, are you One?

[Stoner]

If you recognize the name BNY Mellon, you may be aware of the data backup loss that they experienced ~6 months ago involving 4.5 million people.
They are offering a 2 year service to a credit monitoring company called Experian.
Insurance is $25K by Virgina Surety.

Does anyone have any more detail than what's been posted officially and is their offer to their clients a good one?

Is Experian a reputable service?

 

[LuckyStrike]

If you recognize the name BNY Mellon, you may be aware of the data backup loss that they experienced ~6 months ago involving 4.5 million people.
They are offering a 2 year service to a credit monitoring company called Experian.
Insurance is $25K by Virgina Surety.

Does anyone have any more detail than what's been posted officially and is their offer to their clients a good one?

Is Experian a reputable service?

I am not sure of this, so don't hold me to this, but I think I vaguely remember reading about Experian partnering with an outfit called Affinion, which was formerly known as Trilegiant.

Google Trilegiant + Fraud and you can get a sense of who these people are.

 

[iltos]

i got one of those letters in the mail today

i figger that mellon was concerned with confidence, and offered this up as a kind of appeasement, figuring maybe, at the most, 25% of their customers might act on it....(and more like 10% in all likelyhood....either way, i don't feel their CONCERN is all that much...it's just the APPEARANCE that is important to them

so they shopped price....and these guys were the winners.

the winners, on the other hand (fraud or not) want to present a quality product, hoping that they'll come out of this with some satisfied, and permanent, mellon customers

it's worth the risk to me.

 

[Stoner]

i got one of those letters in the mail today

i figger that mellon was concerned with confidence, and offered this up as a kind of appeasement, figuring maybe, at the most, 25% of their customers might act on it....(and more like 10% in all likelyhood....either way, i don't feel their CONCERN is all that much...it's just the APPEARANCE that is important to them

so they shopped price....and these guys were the winners.

the winners, on the other hand (fraud or not) want to present a quality product, hoping that they'll come out of this with some satisfied, and permanent, mellon customers

it's worth the risk to me.

I've lost all confidence in Mellon, but it's the Corporate entity that shops the provider for shareholder services, not the share holders.........I think I'll be firing off some letters to CEO's about the bank that represents them

As it stands, according to Mellon, there has been no illegal use of this info.
What are good security measures to put in place now that the data is lost?
I've changed credit card numbers.
I've signed up with Experian.
Are there better credit monitors that I should consider?
I'll be speaking with my banker today about my account access.
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

 

[LuckyStrike]

Have you placed a fraud alert with a credit reporting agency. I think you only have to do it with one of them, and then they share it with the other two. Makes it a little bit harder for anyone to open lines of credit in your name.

 

[WendyM]

Are there better credit monitors that I should consider?

Experian, TransUnion and Equifax are the three main credit reporting agencies. When you request your free annual credit report, those are the three available to you. I'd consider also signing up with TransUnion and Equifax. At the very least, make sure you get a credit report annually from all three. And as LuckyStrike said, definitely notify them that your account has been compromised.

 

[LuckyStrike]

I've lost all confidence in Mellon, but it's the Corporate entity that shops the provider for shareholder services, not the share holders.........I think I'll be firing off some letters to CEO's about the bank that represents them

As it stands, according to Mellon, there has been no illegal use of this info.
What are good security measures to put in place now that the data is lost?
I've changed credit card numbers.
I've signed up with Experian.
Are there better credit monitors that I should consider?
I'll be speaking with my banker today about my account access.
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Affinion does do the credit watch service for Experian. Be advised they will charge your credit card for this service forever. If you ever want to cancel the service, you will find that they make it extremely difficult to do so. If you get frustrated in your attempt to cancel the service and try to resort to contesting their charges or blocking their charges with your credit card company, you will probably find that they have an agreement with your credit card company that prevents their charges from being contested or blocked.

 

[iltos]

Be advised they will charge your credit card for this service forever. If you ever want to cancel the service, you will find that they make it extremely difficult to do so.

That is a possibility I hadn't considered. The only way I could get aol to stop charging me for their "service" was to convince my credit card not to pay them anymore.

 

[Stoner]

Have you placed a fraud alert with a credit reporting agency. I think you only have to do it with one of them, and then they share it with the other two. Makes it a little bit harder for anyone to open lines of credit in your name.

No.
That appears to be one of the 'pay' services and I'm hesitant of getting involved with Experion from what you posted.
I've only signed on for the 'free' aspects provided by Mellon.

I've got an appointment with my banker tomorrow to discuss the issue and get recommendations.

 

[LuckyStrike]

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/data/idt.shtm

 

[Stoner]

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/data/idt.shtm

Thanks for the link.

 

[Stoner]

I did the free annual credit check at Equifax and everything came up A-OK!

I'm looking at Equifax's offers.
ID Patrol
3 in 1 monitoring
and Credit Watch Gold

Has anyone had any experience with Equifax and have a choice among those three they'd recommend?
I'm tilting toward the 'ID Patrol'.

 

[Stoner]

Update.

The number of people involved in Mellon's loss of data has increased up to 12 million nationwide and is often including people unaware of any connection to Mellon.
My sister's identity was involved in this loss and she has not been notified and would not have checked out her situation if I hadn't been aware of a common link we both shared to Mellon.

It would be wise to double check with Mellon to see if you are among those that are involved if you haven't been notified and check back on this issue from time to time.
This was a breach of the most serious type........the loss of names, SS#s, financial account #s ( from savings to home loans) and other means of personal ID.

http://www.identitytheftdaily.com/i...sonal-Information-of-135000-CT-Residents.html

Mellon initially said about 4.5 million people nationwide were affected. Late last week, the bank announced about an additional 8 million consumers had information on the stolen tapes.

I'm now seeing the missing tapes being referred to as 'stolen' in various articles rather than 'missing'.
Not sure whether Mellon has restated why they are missing, but it's bad for the account holder either way.

So far, I have had no ID theft issues to deal with.

 

[valis]

I have not either, but it's worrisome that the numbers continue to climb, and we still don't know if they are missing or stolen......surprised that a federal agency isn't looking closer at this......and I've hear nada on the wires about it.....

 

[Stoner]

Tim, thanks for editing the title

It's incredible how sloppy the professionals get with all the buzz on ID theft and security.

This was about 20 years ago.......I'd just sent the IRS a quarterly payment and my bank called up telling me I was $50 overdrawn on my checking account.
I usually only carried enough funds to operate my business from week to week with a build up at each quarter for taxes.
So, what ever was written had to stand out as unusual.
My check book was balanced so I figured it was a check that had been recently altered.
I asked the manager to read off the checks not yet returned and she said it wasn't because of a check.
Turns out, the tellers were accepting an internal, unsigned memo to transfer a specified amount to a savings account at a different bank, which I had no account with.
Some employee was watching my account balance and just missed cleaning it out by overdrawing and initiating a request for me to deposit sufficient funds into the overdrawn amount.
I got lucky.
But about 30 other depositors weren't and had their checking accounts cleaned out.
The thief/employee was never caught.
I changed banks.

Another time, different bank.........my mother closed her own savings account using the correct account # only to find my sister's account which had a similar balance, was closed instead.
As a family, we changed banks.

I've often thought too many of those handling our money were essentially brain dead.