PC Community Main Meeting
7:30 - 10 pm March 6, 2015
Calvary Baptist Church 28924 Ruus Road, Hayward California
The meeting was called to order at 7:35 pm by President Chuck Horner. Get your raffle tickets, door prize tickets, and 3” x 5” cards to write questions for discussion/answers at the end of the Meeting. Get at least one $5 raffle ticket for this month’s raffle prize, Patriot Blitz 32 GB USB 3.0 memory stick.
The Mobile SIG will meet March 16 in the same room as the Main meeting.
Presentation: Anne Madrid, of the Identity Theft Council, discussed, “Protecting Your Good Name.”
Handouts with all the presentation information information will be available via email.
California leads the nation in identity theft. Children are the fastest growing group of victims, but you can assume that someone somewhere has the information of everyone in the US, with the intent of misusing it. In the past, mere possession of personal information was not a crime. Now it is technically, though it is rarely prosecuted.
The Federal Trade Commission is the only agency that keeps statistics on identity theft. But only about 25% of identity theft is reported to them.
Identity theft is harder to prosecute than the old-fashioned kind. It is also more lucrative. The Internet can open you to a variety of threats. Anne has a dedicated computer she uses only for financial transactions. She does not use it for email.
If your credit card statement shows a small discrepancy, be alerted to a test fraud. Be careful with a Visa or Mastercard debit card. Don't let it out of your sight. Other flags are when bills don't show up in your mailbox or you're getting calls from creditors you've never heard of. Get information from them, then look it up on the internet.
Go to 1-888-5OPTOUT to stop the 3 credit bureaus from sharing your information. Also, write to your existing creditors—all the places you pay bills—to opt out of their sharing your information and be put on their nonpromotional list. Obtain credit monitoring and check your credit twice a year.
Anne strongly suggests a credit monitoring service. Another option is to place a credit freeze with each of the credit bureaus. You can lift a credit freeze for a specific period of time when applying for credit—such as when making a major purchase.
If you find out you're a credit fraud victim, file a police report.
Anne will send her presentation and resources to Chuck, who will be sure that it is emailed to all PCC members and provided to the Webmaster for posting. Members are encouraged to share the information.
Going to FraudwatchInternational.com can get you a list of attempted fraud and phishing attempts; for example, you can check to see if your bank really sent out an email asking for your personal info. Googling a phone number will pull up reports of fraud attempted from that number.
Raffle Prize
Patriot Blitz 32 GB USB 3.0 memory stick. Don Odle
Question: Chuck can't figure out why he can only go to Google sites; but if he does a search, he gets an error message. Don Odle suggests adding WoT, the WebOfTrust
Thank you to Michael Wong for taking care of refreshments and also to for helping with room logistics and with the signs.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:06 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Bayle Emlein
