No Debt Plan

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I got an e-mail from ING Direct’s Corporate Relations Department:

I’ve been following your blog for quite some time now and wanted to reach out and introduce myself. I’m a part of ING DIRECT’s Corporate Relations team and am fortunate enough to be responsible for researching and reading various personal finance blogs. I say fortunate enough because even when I go home at night I find myself following certain blogs on my own time! Before anything else, I wanted to commend you on the job well done with your blog; it’s creative, fresh, and informative.

As you may know, the two things at ING DIRECT that we take most seriously are Customer security and satisfaction. Our IT Department is always looking for ways to make sure our Customer’s banking experience is as secure as possible. Despite being named America’s “safest bank” by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley we wanted to take our security one step further – after all, you rarely hear someone complain that their bank is “too safe!”

We partnered with Trusteer Inc. to offer their Rapport consumer identity theft protection software – completely free of cost. I won’t bore you with details (they can all be found in the attached press release), but will provide you with a direct link to the offer on our site: http://home.ingdirect.com/privacy/privacy.asp?s=Promotions

Thanks for your time Kevin keep up the great writing!

Pretty sweet, and they are offering that free ID theft protection software on the site now. Check it out!

I’m not sure if ING sends these out randomly, but it sounds interesting. And hey, if you work at ING Direct, tell all of your customers about this site!

For the past few weeks I have been getting a call on my cellphone from an “Unavailable” number. I decided to ignore it. If the call was important, they would leave a message.

Well after a few weeks of being called once or twice per day, I started to get annoyed. I picked up, and the lady on the other end asked for me by name. I was instantly suspicious as she did not identify herself (e.g. “Hi, this is Lisa from Company X, is this Kevin?”). In response, I simply asked who was calling. She said her first name, and nothing else. She then persistently asked if this was Kevin.

I said, you’ve got the wrong number. Her response was, “Are you sure, this is in regards to your Visa card.” I once again said you’ve got the wrong number, and hung up.

Since she knew my first and last name and was referencing me having a Visa card I became worried about identity theft. On my way home from work I called the number on the back of both of our Visa accounts to report the issue.

When I spoke with Chase, the representative was very friendly and helpful. He said there was an identify theft scam going around where the thieves try to get you to verify your information over the phone. He said the scam revolved around getting your interest rate lower. The rep said there was also a possibility it was a third-party marketing firm they were using, but without further information it would be impossible to tell.

I thanked him for his time, and called an old Visa card that we still have open. The automated line said there was a $0.00 balance, so I didn’t go further to speak with a representative. I haven’t seen any suspicious charges on either card. I’m hoping this is the last I’ll hear of it.

Don’t forget: never give out your information over the phone when someone from a company you are using calls you. Always verify their ID badge number, their department, and direct line. Then call the corporate number (on the back of credit cards, or look at the company web page to get the customer service line).

What do you think? Does this sound like identity theft or a bad third-party call center?

There was a discussion over at the GRS forums that made me want to write this. What do you do with all of those bank and credit card statements that come to your house? Throwing them in the trash is asking for trouble. Identity thieves could steal your information and then you’ve got a whole new set of problems to deal with.

I recommend buying your own paper shredder. But is a shredder really worth it?

The likelihood of someone stealing your garbage that just happens to contain a piece of paper with your social security or account number on it is slim. Still, identify theft does happen and it is a major pain to get cleared up. How would you like to not only have to completely start over with your financial life, but when you start you are further back in the race than you were when you started originally? It must be very frustrating. Varying reports have said it can take more than 60 hours to recover from identity theft. Thankfully (knock on wood), I have never experienced it.

A lot of personal finance is changing habits. Buying a shredder is just another way to change your behavior ever so slightly for a positive result. You want to completely destroy anything with your social security number, account number, or other sensitive information (brokerage statements, what’s left of your checkbook after the last check, etc.). I even shred the return portion of credit card offers. Every day we go through the mail and sort it into various piles. There’s an action pile, a throw away pile, and a shred pile. A very simple system. It takes maybe an additional minute to shred the extra documents rather than just throwing them away. I feel the effort and cost are definitely worth it.

Types of Shredding

There are several different types of shredders. Money magazine did a test a while back for home use (the website says the article is from 2005 and I have to think there was another best since then, but I can’t find it). What we use is a 8 sheet cross-cut shredder. A cross-cut does exactly what you might think it does — it shreds sheets in both diagonal directions. This results in small diamond shaped confetti. I guess if someone was really determined they might be able to piece all of the small pieces back together, but this works for us.

In the discussion at the GetRichSlowly forums (linked above), someone mentioned there are different levels of shredding quality. I found a website, ABC Office, that discusses the various types of security.

Our shredder cost $50 at Office Depot. You should be able to find one for a similar price point, maybe even less. If you use FatWallet, you could probably earn some cash back. It is a bit of an investment, but it gives us peace of mind.