Identity Theft Protection Available from Banks - For a Price   - 2,496 Views, 2 Comments

It’s a huge problem, with a huge price tag. Recently it was estimated, for example, that in the State of Oregon alone, identity theft costs Oregonians $5billion annually. Annually!

So banks and other financial institutions are starting to offer identity theft protection. But they are charging their customers $9.95 to $15.00 per month for this protection. For protection from leaks and hacks which are often - not always, but often - caused by the lax security and procedures of the institutions themselves. Or for their failure to provide a way for customers to be certain that they are at their bank’s website, and not that of a phishy knock-off.

They are charging protection money for that identity theft protection.

Bank of America spokesman Richard Brown said of the Bank of America identity theft protection protection charge, “It’s a value-added service, and consumers have the freedom to decide if they want to pay for it.”

Others, however, don’t quite see it that way. Rather than a value-added service, they see it as the banking industry needing to clean up their act to fix a serious problem for which they are at least in part responsible, but wanting their customers - the very ones who need protection from those problems - to subsidize their correction.

Says Chris Hoofnagle, with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the financial services industry “is expert at creating products out of problems they created.”