Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Is Your Info Out There, or Are They Just Guessing?
It can be pretty unsettling to get a communication from a strange company that appears to know where you bank, who holds your mortgage or even that you have an annuity or a bank certificate of deposit about to mature. How do those strangers know your private financial business?
In some cases, the information you think is private is actually public record. Your mortgage, for example, is part of the records of the county where you live and anyone can look it up. I went online and found mine, with both the name of the lender and the amount of the mortgage right there on the first page. That makes it easy for mortgage brokers to mention my lender in their refinancing offers. In other cases, a financial institution may have shared your information. The financial privacy notices you get in the mail from banks, brokers, credit card issuers and other financial companies are warnings that your information isn't being kept completely private. "Personally identifiable information" such as account balances often is shared with affiliated companies.
In addition, unless you tell the company not to disclose it, the information can be shared with unrelated third parties. It is up to you to follow the fine-print instructions to "opt out."
Sometimes these communications are nothing more than a marketer's shot in the dark. The so-called "phishing" e-mails are a prime example. If a crook sends out a million e-mails purporting to be from SunTrust Bank, some of the recipients actually will be SunTrust customers. It doesn't mean the scam artist had a list of SunTrust customers to contact. Recently I heard from a reader who was upset about a postcard she received from a company trying to sell her an annuity, informing her that "you may have an annuity that has reached the end of its surrender period." Since she is an annuity owner, it is possible her insurance company shared this information. More likely her name and address appeared on a mailing list -- such as readers of certain magazines or residents of certain ZIP codes -- of people deemed likely to own annuities. Unsolicited communications should be viewed skeptically no matter what the company knows about you. What matters is what you can find out about the company and whether it has something of value to offer you.
Brought to you by Guardian eCommerce.
In some cases, the information you think is private is actually public record. Your mortgage, for example, is part of the records of the county where you live and anyone can look it up. I went online and found mine, with both the name of the lender and the amount of the mortgage right there on the first page. That makes it easy for mortgage brokers to mention my lender in their refinancing offers. In other cases, a financial institution may have shared your information. The financial privacy notices you get in the mail from banks, brokers, credit card issuers and other financial companies are warnings that your information isn't being kept completely private. "Personally identifiable information" such as account balances often is shared with affiliated companies.
In addition, unless you tell the company not to disclose it, the information can be shared with unrelated third parties. It is up to you to follow the fine-print instructions to "opt out."
Sometimes these communications are nothing more than a marketer's shot in the dark. The so-called "phishing" e-mails are a prime example. If a crook sends out a million e-mails purporting to be from SunTrust Bank, some of the recipients actually will be SunTrust customers. It doesn't mean the scam artist had a list of SunTrust customers to contact. Recently I heard from a reader who was upset about a postcard she received from a company trying to sell her an annuity, informing her that "you may have an annuity that has reached the end of its surrender period." Since she is an annuity owner, it is possible her insurance company shared this information. More likely her name and address appeared on a mailing list -- such as readers of certain magazines or residents of certain ZIP codes -- of people deemed likely to own annuities. Unsolicited communications should be viewed skeptically no matter what the company knows about you. What matters is what you can find out about the company and whether it has something of value to offer you.
Brought to you by Guardian eCommerce.
