"BRH" wrote:

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One Stop is Wachovia's name for Yodlee's MoneyCenter account aggregator.
Here's Wachovia's explanation of it -http://www.wachovia.com/personal/page/0,,10_7272,00.html and here's
Yodlee's site -> http://corporate.yodlee.com/ with a demo -http://corporate.yodlee.com/moneycenter/PFM_demo.htm

When you log into your accounts on Wachovia's site, the link for One Stop
should be under the list of your checking/savings/etc accounts in the View
Accounts / My Accounts tab. The accounts you can track with One Stop aren't
limited to those you have with Wachovia. Track anything you like that's in
their list - credit cards, utility bills, investments, bank accounts, etc.

Yodlee also provides free access to their latest version. The link for
registration is at the bottom of their home page, but be aware that it is a
beta-testing site. Things break without warning.

In my view, credit bureau etc are extraggering the credit risk more in
a view to profit themselves. If they really concer about such risks,
they can do much better to prevent them in the first instance. These
guys just want to get more people to pay for these services. In
another word, such service offers little value to consumers.

Let me give you an example. Within four months soon after we relocated
to US from UK, my wife got 4 different names and 2 different date of
birth on the credit report. She wrote to the credit bureau with
supporting document (passport etc) to ask it to correct the information
in its system. However she was told that she must contact whoever
directly initiate the inquiry to correct these information.

The point is, first, it's the credit burear who had the wrong
information regardless where it came from, it had a duty to correct it
if it really wants to reduce identity theft. Maybe sb else supplied
the wrong info, but from we, consumers, perspective, I see the
information you have about me is wrong. Using an example, if A drove a
car hit B which resulted B in hitting C. C probably would hold B
responsible, then B will get hold of A. Nobody will expect B say to C,
"Sorry, it's A's fault, you should talk to him directly. It's not my
problem."

Secondly, and more importantly, if the credit bureas really concern
about identity theft, it can help prevent it easily from the first
instance. For example, given a SSN, it can uniquely detemine people's
name and date of birth etc. Therefore it can reject any inquiry which
does not contain correct information, and will not allow rubbish to go
into people's credit repor in the first instance.

Thirdly, most credit card companies will honor "it's not me" claims.
When you want to borrow mortgages, it's also easy to explain/correct
(remember mortgage is a secured loan). So, on average, I don't think
an average person will lost $120 per year due to identity theft
(assuming monthly monitoring service costs $10)

So in summary, such monitoring service is about profit and money, not
for consumer protected.

"BRH" <BRH[at]giganews.com> wrote in message news:femdndppmO4jG8vYnZ2dnUVZ_vidnZ2d[at]comcast.com...
- quote -

Because of having run into similar unauthorized charges in the past,
I now check my credit card activity online every few days, as well as
having the card issuer email me an alert when unusual activity occurs.

--
John Richards

BRH wrote:

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Of course - I have cards from MBNA (now Bank of America) and Citibank
that both offer the feature which works like this;
When I want to make an online purchase (or phone, for that matter) I go
to the credit card issuer website and log in to my account. I then ask
for a new CC number worth, say $50, good for 2 months.
Up pops a image of a credit card, new #, and exp date (even the 3 digit
extra that would be on the back).
I use that number for the purchase, and that's it. By setting the value
to equal the purchase you are about to make, it's a one use, throw away.
In 5 years of doing this I found one vendor that was, for some unknown
reason, unable to accept this, and for that I used a card I kept that
had a low credit line.

Given the guarantees most card issuer have against fraud, using virtual
numbers is strictly your choice, but for those of us who are paranoid
about the potential idiots who will use our data to, er, wrap fish, I'll
continue to use them.
JOE

joetaxpayer wrote:
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Thanks for your reponse. Can you elaborate on what you mean by a
"virtual number"?

ibookdb.net wrote:
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I'm a Wachovia customer and I use Quicken to track my finances.
However, none of my CC's are from Wachovia. Can you explain what the
"One Stop" form with Wachovia is all about, and where I can find info on it?

Thanks!

are there any credit monitoring services that inform you when
inquires/requests for credit are made?

That sort of service would actually be useful and orthogonal to any
protections already built in to any individual credit accounts. You'd
know when/if anyone was applying for credit in your name.

However, everything I've seen has had a monthly fee such that it's
high priced insurance to get that info in near real time vs reviewing
your credit report for free annually to check for any fraudulent
accounts.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

With free once a month credit score from Providian (just for having a
credit card with them) and three free credit reports a year, one from
each bureau, credit monitoring services are of no use anyway.

And I don't think there is any service that can notify you that promptly
because as you said, nobody knows about it until your cc company reports
it. So the only way to get prompt reporting is if it were directly from
your cc company reporting your transactions to you.

With One Stop form Wachovia (and similar free services from several
banks), I can see all my transactions in the last week in one place so I
don't have to login to 20 accounts to do so. They do have automatic
alert features but I'm not sure whether they do what you want. You can
try using Quicken or Money to do that for you but I have been largely
unsuccessful with using Money because it does a lot more than I want it
to do and not exactly how I would like it and some of the user interface
choices have me completely stumped. I really liked the Yahoo Finance
Money Manager service but alas it is no more

BRH wrote:
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======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
Please trim the post to which you are responding. "Trim" means that except for a FEW lines to add context, the previous post is deleted.

BRH wrote:
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In theory, they are supposed to notify you of any attempt to access your
file when inquiries are made for the purpose of opening a new credit
line. The words 'identity theft' are misused (as are many words such as
'saving', 'investment', and 'is') Any instance of someone using someone
else's card or account is considered identity theft. This number
approaches millions of instances per year, I believe. Yet, true identity
theft which I thought was properly defined as "the opening of new credit
accounts under another person's name" and not an instance of the use of
an established account.

You can understand that any employee of any store where you use you
credit card can take the number and attempt unauthorized charges. This
is different than someone proactively opening an account in your name.
You can insist that the three reporting agencies put a block on your
account. This would permanently freeze anyone's access to you
information and history for the purpose of opening a new line of credit.
You would have to lift the hold if you were in the market for a mortgage
or wanted to get a new credit card. The agencies don't like this as it
cuts into their business. Not too long ago, the Boston Globe, in a
remarkable case of "well, excuuuuse me*" printed the names and credit
card numbers of all their subscribers on computer paper. They then
wrapped the Sunday papers with the printouts and sent the papers out.
Within two days, a co-worker of mine was told that nearly $10,000 in
charges was made overseas on the account. Me, I had used a virtual
number, the limit on the number was the annual subscription fee, so the
account had zero credit available and no chance for going over. I use
the virtual number for all online or phone transactions.

As another poster stated, you can get the free report at
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp
every year. But since there are 3, you should cycle through every 4
months. My wife and I stagger the requests so we are two months out of
sync with each other, getting a report every two months.

JOE

*I hope the Steve Martin routine reference was understood here.

BRH wrote:
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Thanks for posting this. It confirms my suspicions.

Best regards,
Bob

BRH wrote:

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It's not worth it. Some credit card companies (Discover Card, for
example) will directly send you e-mail alerts if a purchase over a
certain dollar amount (user configured) posts to your account, or they
will call you if an unusually large on-line purchase is detected. They
all typically let you check your account on-line, where you can
frequently see temp authorizations that are only a few hours old, and
certainly any posted transactions by the following day.

Earlier this century I paid for a similar credit monitoring service for
one year, before the annualcreditreport.com law was passed (three free
reports per year, still being rolled out nationwide as I recall). The
one and only time it alerted me, turns out my car/house insurance was
about to be transferred to another carrier who ran a credit inquiry
(which still baffles me, why insurance coverage should have anything to
do with my credit rating, since the premium is due in advance). My
insurance agent hadn't yet gotten around to informing me about this, but
in the end my advance knowledge didn't change anything, so there was
really no value to it.

-Mark Bole

Does not surprise me one bit...
Cal



"BRH" <BRH[at]giganews.com> wrote in message
news:femdndppmO4jG8vYnZ2dnUVZ_vidnZ2d[at]comcast.com...
- quote -

I've been using Equifax's Credit Monitoring Service for a few years, and
I'm wondering how the knowledgable people in this newsgroup feel about
the usefulness of such a service. The service is supposed to
"instantly" notify me (by e-mail) of any large increases to my credit
card balances, and if any new accounts/inquiries are made in my name.
After the following incident I canceled the service. I would appreciate
any comments about what I expereinced. Here's my <longish> story...

Yesterday (11/10/06), I got a credit card bill that contained 3 charges
(transactions dated 11/2/06) that were not mine. I immediately notified
the credit card company and the account was closed. The CC company is
now investigating. However, then I wondered why I was never notified by
Equifax that my balance had increased suddenly by approximately 400%, so
I called them to complain. The Customer Service Rep explained to me
that Equifax never notified me about it because the credit card company
had not yet notified Equifax of these charges. She explained that
Equifax typically gets updates from the credit card companies only once
every 30 days, so they hadn't heard about these charges even though they
already appear on my bill. (I subsequently verified this 30-day time
frame with the CC company.) Since the CC company sent their monthly
updated to Equifax on 10/31 (with the next one due on 11/30), and these
charges were made to my card on 11/2, I wouldn't have been notified by
Equifax for another 3-1/2 weeks!

I then asked the Customer Service Rep whether Equifax would notify
Experian and TransUnion of what happened with this card for me, since
"Identity Theft Protection Services" is supposed to also be included in
my coverage. The answer was NO. So, I asked the rep exactly what my
$100/year is paying for-- No prompt notification of suspected fraudulent
charges, and no help with covering the bases on Identity Theft. After a
long silence, she responded that I have $20,000 coverage for fraudulent
charges. I responded that that's also useless since the CC company will
remove any disputed charges that I report promptly. Her only response
was a plaintive "I'm sorry..."

What the heck?

Needless to say, I canceled my coverage on the spot. I now feel that
their advertising for these services is at least misleading and possibly
fraudulant. I'd be interested in hearing of anyone's experiences with
these types of services and/or comments about my experience. Are they
all this shoddy? Or is there some valuable service that they provide
that I'm simply missing?

If someone knows of a reasonably priced protection plan that actually
works as advertised, I'd be interested in hearing about it (strictly for
protection against someone else opening an account in my name). But if
they all perform like this, forget it!

Thanks for listening!