Many people are worried about identity fraud. Not paranoid, but generally curious about the chances they could be victimized by things like mail theft. Now there is a Web site that offers an assessment of a person's identity fraud risk for free.
The My ID Score site was recently launched by ID Analytics, which offers corporations and consumers services to protect them against identity fraud.
It scans the company's ID Network, billed as the largest identity fraud database in the United States, to see what types of activities and transactions have been made in your name.
Thomas Oscherwitz, chief privacy officer at ID Analytics said it looks at hundreds of variables and data points and then looks for anomalies, such as credit card applications on the same day with different addresses or pre-paid cell phone purchases in a short period of time.
The site focuses on transactions that use your personal data and does not look at account fraud in which someone uses your stolen credit card or in which your credit card data was stolen in a network breach at a payment processing company, for example.
"We look at events within the network, such as whether someone is using your information to apply for credit cards," Oscherwitz said.
Within the site, most people fall within the range of 1-450, which is considered moderate risk, according to Oscherwitz. A score of 600 and above is considered high risk, he added.
The site asks for basic information such as name, address, phone number, and date of birth. It also asks for Social Security number but it is not compulsory.
The site then asked a series of multiple choice questions that a legitimate user would know--things like identifying cities I've lived in, addresses, phone numbers and middle initial.
Once the score is displayed, the site offers information for how to obtain free copies of a credit report and offers links to other sites with information about identity fraud and companies that offer monitoring services.
For consumers whose scores are high, the site partners with the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center to provide more information about what underlying data triggered the score, Oscherwitz said.