Let’s all stand and cheer for Judy Yacio, a retired Texas school principal who struck a blow to stop identity theft. She exposed a flaw in the Teacher Retirement System of Texas that could make it easy for identity thieves to steal her personal banking information.

Government data breaches, in which personal information is accidentally released or stolen, are growing. This year, ineptitude on the part of federal, state and local governments was responsible for nearly half of all personal records lost in data breaches, according to statistics kept by the Identity Theft Resource Center. The rest happened in businesses, especially in the banking and medical communities.

In the spring of 2011, the Texas comptroller’s office announced that, for about a year, it had inadvertently exposed Social Security numbers and other data about 3.5 million Texans on a state website accessible to the public. The breach, probably the largest in Texas history, included names and addresses, and sometimes birth dates and driver’s license information. That’s enough for any ID thief to wipe some out financially.

The Texas attorney general’s office and the FBI launched a criminal investigation. Several employees in the comptroller’s office were fired.

In June 2011, 4,900 current and former workers at the state Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services were told that their personal information was exposed.

“Government has to be more careful,” Yacio says.

She knows. As readers of the Dave Lieber Watchdog column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram first learned, after Yacio switched the bank account to which her retirement check was to be directly deposited, she got a call from her credit union telling her that it had received a letter from TRS to confirm the change. But her personal information, the credit union told her, was clearly visible through the TRS envelope.

TRS had used a window-style envelope. Yacio’s name, address and account number were visible through the front window. Anyone who handled the letter could use that information to steal from her.

Yacio flipped out. She contacted the state comptroller’s office, which directed her to TRS. She also complained to state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth. A staffer contacted TRS on her behalf, too.

“Window envelopes are a bad idea when sending sensitive information, as some things show that we don’t want others to see,” the former principal scolds. “People are getting sloppier and sloppier in protecting our personal information. And we wonder why identity theft has increased. The state needs to be more careful. Period!”

Her plan was to push the issue: “I rightly raised a ruckus,” she says. “People need not sit back and accept what is being done.”

She told TRS leaders on the phone, “Guys, you’ve got to quit using window envelopes. Window envelopes are very dangerous with this kind of information.”

TRS officials did something she did not expect: They listened to her.

TRS spokeswoman Rhonda Price told Watchdog Nation: “We can confirm that we have changed our procedures.” Letters with personal information to banks and credit unions “will now be mailed utilizing mailing labels so that the content of the envelope cannot be seen.

“Our longer-term solution will be to have the sensitive information taken off [the letters], but that will require programming changes. We believe our interim solution will resolve the issue until the programming changes can be made.”

Yacio praises TRS for its quick recovery.

Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, says breaches caused by government are worse than those caused by private businesses.

“As a consumer, I chose which businesses I will share my personal information with. I don’t have that luxury with government.

“If I want a driver’s license, I have to give my Social Security number. I pay taxes, and I have to use my Social Security number. If I want unemployment, I have to give my Social Security number.

“Government for a long time has allowed the Social Security number to be the de facto piece of identifying information about each of us. The downside is that government has never really learned how to control the information.”

That’s why Yacio’s battle cry is noteworthy. When any vulnerability is found in the protection of personal data, raise a ruckus.

# # #

Dave Lieber shows Americans how to fight back against corporate deceptions in his wonderful book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong.

The book focuses sharply on how to protect against identity theft and defend yourself if you’ve fallen victim to this. Are you tired of losing time, money and aggravation to all the assaults on our wallets? Learn how to fight back with ease — and win. Get the book here.

Read The Watchdog Nation manifesto here!

Memo to: Guy Cottrell

U.S. Chief Postal Inspector

From: Watchdog Nation

Dear Chief Inspector:

I write on behalf of thousands of people whose mail has been stolen from blue postal collection boxes in North Texas. My city, Fort Worth, leads the nation in mailbox thefts, according to records I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Sir, an incident last month shows how the crime-reporting system, such as it is, is faulty — and how innocent people are unnecessarily hurt because of a lack of information. You’re the leader of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. You can easily fix this.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram // Dave Lieber Watchdog column already know, for more than two years, I have publicly shared information about mailbox thefts in the region, mostly because authorities refuse to do so. The postal inspectors who work for you say they cannot release date-and-place details of mail thefts from public boxes, at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office. Providing such information, they say, would jeopardize their criminal investigations.

Others, including me, believe that people have a right to know when something as important as their mail may have been stolen so they can work quickly to prevent identity theft.

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Case in point: a June 3 incident at the Trinity River post office on Oak Park Lane in Fort Worth.

A reader tipped me that the two outdoor blue boxes were missing. Where did they go?

When I called the post office, an employee who answered the phone told me that nothing had happened.

Then I called the U.S. Postal Service, and spokesman Sam Bolen told me that the mailboxes were defaced and taken out for repainting.

“We have nothing to indicate mail was stolen from these collection boxes,” Bolen said.

Well, I do.

After I reported the conflicting statements by postal employees, I heard from two people who placed mail in Trinity River post office collection boxes June 3. They say their mail never arrived.

Both told me that they, like me, had tried to learn what happened and couldn’t get a straight answer.

Elaine Stoltz says checks she mailed were stolen from the box. She figured it out when the checks didn’t arrive at their destinations. Then someone walked into her bank with a temporary driver’s license in her name and withdrew $1,500 from her bank account. Stoltz believes that the thief used information from the stolen mail. Her bank covered the loss.

A Fort Worth man told me that his mailed checks also never arrived. Then someone used a fake check with his name to buy $290 worth of merchandise from Walmart.

The man said that when he called the postal inspector’s office to complain, an employee “tells me on the phone that as far as they could determine, no mail was missing.”

I must ask: How do they know? (Apparently, they don’t.)

That same man then stopped a mail carrier on his route. When asked, the carrier said, “We’re really not supposed to talk about it, but something did happen.”

Chief Inspector Cottrell, the solution is one that is used in other parts of the country. I’ve found that in other areas, authorities do release details of mailbox thefts. This helps victims begin cleaning up identity theft problems sooner rather than later.

Please change the policy in North Texas. Allow all public mailbox thefts to be reported. Be more forthcoming.

There’s no doubt that the postal inspectors in our region are good at what they do. In fiscal 2010, the Fort Worth office reported 195 arrests and 192 convictions related to mail and identity theft. That’s among the best in the nation, but then again, they have a lot to work with.

Tarrant County had 60 thefts in 2009 and more than 80 last year (and those don’t include thefts from private mailboxes).

Certainly, we have a special problem here and things are getting worse before they get better.

Thank you,

Dave Lieber

On behalf of Watchdog Nation

# # #

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation.

Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

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Those blue postal collection boxes outside of post offices are sitting ducks for identity thieves. Getting mail out of them is as easy as licking an envelope.

Crimes occur but information is scarce

Yet the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection service don’t easily release the information about mailbox break-ins to the public. Rarely, do you see these break-ins listed in police crime reports. The only way to get the information is through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, the problem of thefts from blue U.S. Postal Service collection boxes apparently hasn’t gotten any better in the past year. Watchdog Nation took a sample of its home Fort Worth postal district.

Mostly unreported crimes

A year ago, the Fort Worth postal district reported 60 mailbox thefts in 13 months. But in the past 11 months, there have been more than 80 incidents in the district, which includes Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene and Decatur, too.

Most of the thefts are in Fort Worth and Arlington. (See the 3-page government release here.)

Fort Worth boxes were hit almost 40 times, with the crimes scattered throughout the city.

Arlington had 28 reported incidents. One blue collection box at 300 E. South St. was apparently hit eight times.

Other cities hit: Amarillo with five, Abilene with three, River Oaks and Euless with two each, and one each in Haslet, Haltom City, Watauga, Grand Prairie, Lubbock and Decatur.

Watchdog Nation methodology

I asked for a list of all reported incidents of theft, vandalism and tampering involving the blue collection boxes in the last 11 months of 2010.

The Postal Inspection Service cautioned me about the data it sent me:

“These reports are the raw, unverified data provided by USPS employees. Some of the entries provided contain duplicate reports of possible thefts or vandalism, as well as unverified dates of possible thefts or vandalism.” (I eliminated the obvious duplicates.)

I asked for vandalism and tampering crimes, too, because it’s often hard to prove any mail was stolen, but a good indicator is whether a mailbox was vandalized or tampered with.

The data matches anecdotal evidence gleaned from readers in recent months. An Arlington man notified the Star-Telegram in December that mailbox break-ins in his city were “rampant.” A Fort Worth man contacted me in November about thefts at a collection box at the post office near South Hulen Street at 4450 Oak Park Lane (the list includes two incidents there in October).

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How bad is the problem?

John Breyault of the National Consumer League suggests that before you mail anything, you check the condition of a mailbox. “Is it in good repair? Is the lock on it secure? Does it look like it’s been tampered with somehow?”

He also offers an excellent idea: Check periodically with your residential carrier about mailbox thefts in your area.

A mailbox security expert tells me that along with thefts from mailboxes at homes, thefts at collection boxes remain a major problem nationwide.

Background

“It’s basically a crime that’s not being prosecuted because there’s too much of it to deal with,” says Michael Johnston, owner of USMailboxes. “The way I see it and experience it, it has increased tremendously in the last few years. It started out as a way for thieves to get drug money. Now the recession has made it worse.”

Ten years ago, Johnston was hired by the post office to strengthen the blue collection boxes in his home state of Oregon. “We went around and put those security bars on to help make it harder to break into without a key,” he said. “We also put a heavier lock that was harder to pick. And they put special locking nuts on the bolts in the ground so they couldn’t easily be taken off.

“I don’t know how to make them stronger. I don’t think they know either. The biggest problem up here now is they throw a chain around it and yank it out of the ground.”

The blue collection boxes are especially popular, he says, because they contain more mail, especially bill payments containing individual checks. Thieves can use the name, address, account and bank routing numbers on the checks for identity theft.

“The post office would like to remove the blue boxes,” Johnston says. “They would like to take them all off the streets and make people go to the post office or use their own mailbox to send mail out.”

What should you do?

If that’s true, the post office won’t state that publicly. In a statement to The Watchdog this week, Postal Inspection Service spokesman Michael J. Romano writes, “The Postal Service employs crime prevention countermeasures for collection box thefts, but for obvious reasons, this information is law enforcement sensitive and is not released to the public.

“We maintain that the U.S. mail is a very safe and secure way of conducting commerce with close to 600 million pieces of mail and packages successfully delivered daily.”

Still, the post office warns, “When possible, customers should avoid placing mail in a blue collection box after the last posted collection time or on a day mail is not scheduled to be picked up. If they must deposit mail during that time, they should use the lobby drop inside a post office.”

The boxes do not provide this information to consumers. But probably they should with signs. If the boxes are not completely safe, the people using them should know. Mail inside is a sitting target. That’s what the numbers show.

File your own request

If you want to file a freedom of information act request, here’s how you do it:

CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR
US POSTAL SERVICE
475 L’ENFANT PLAZA SW RM 3100
WASHINGTON DC 20260-2100

[Date]

FOIA REQUEST

Dear FOIA Officer:

Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of a listing of all reported incidents of:

- theft of mail from…

- vandalism of mailbox…

- tampering with ….

the blue collection mailboxes located outside all post offices, stations, substations, etc. in the [YOUR DISTRICT] from [GIVE DATES] to the date of this letter, Dec. 31, 2010.

I agree to pay reasonable duplication fees for the processing of this request, but ask that you first alert me to the charges so I may know before any work is done. You may call me about this at xxx-xxx-xxxx or e-mail to xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx.

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material. I, of course, reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to deny a waiver of fees.

I look forward to your reply within 20 business days, as the statute requires.  Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

# # #

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is available in hardcover, as a CD audio book, ebook and hey, what else do you need. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Watchdog Nation is all about protecting yourself for free and in just seconds.

That’s how I try to operate my life — free and fast. And I bet you do, too.

Sometimes, though, that can clutter things up.

Do you shred your documents that contain your personal information before throwing them away? I’ve bought three different shredders from office supply stores — and returned them all. They stink.

Instead, I’ve been waiting for a free, local shredding service to take my receipts, bank statements and paper bills and ground them into pulp. Unfortunately, it can cost a homeowner around $100 for such a service to come to your door or for you to bring it to them.

That’s not Watchdog Nation’s way. We want it done free and in just seconds.

My last big shredding was in June 2007 in Addison, Texas. I remember because I attended an anti-fraud conference that day. Free shredding was one of the lures.

In the past three years, I accumulated more than a hundred pounds of paper. I had boxes stacked in the attic marked “To Be Shredded.” Trash bags were piled high in a spare bedroom.

Then yesterday, they all vanished.

I’ve kept searching the Internet and asking about free shredding. Then I heard about Legend Bank in Fort Worth, Texas that was staging a “Free Shred Day.” I’m not a customer, but the event was open to everybody. I told a lot of my friends and many of them showed up, too.

Legend Bank is getting a reputation for offering checking that pays 4 percent in monthly interest if certain conditions are followed. The shred day was a great way to get people to visit the bank.

Mike Monroe, executive vice president and regional president, also passed along shredding guidelines to his customers — a story by Steven Hastert at www.shrednations.com. You can read it here.

Watchdog Nation hopes you are shredding your documents for free and in seconds. No need to wait three years as I did.

No need for me to repeat the latest identity theft stats here. You know the drill. Suffice it to say that I have written stories in my newspaper about dumpster divers who pull the unshredded stuff out and resell it to drug rings that also engage in identity theft. That’s incentive enough for me to do it right.

We advise you to search the Internet regularly for “free shredding” and the name of your community. These events are almost always held on Saturdays. Often, the sponsors are private businesses, law enforcement authorities and neighborhood associations. You can even call your local shredding companies (easy to find on the Internet) and ask if they are scheduled to offer a free service with any community sponsors in the coming months.

###

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

LifeLock Settles Advertising Dispute With FTC, 35 States

By Dave Lieber

Nobody advertises more than LifeLock.com.

You hear their ads on the Rush Limbaugh radio show, done by Rush himself.

You know company founder Todd Davis’ Social Security number (457-55-5462) because he broadcasts it everywhere to show he’s not worried about someone stealing it (even though a Fort Worth man did just that a few years ago here).

But some of that advertising might have gone a little too far, according to legal documents filed in a settlement announced March 9 by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and 34 other states.

Under the terms of the agreement, LifeLock Inc. “agreed to more accurately describe its ID theft protection services.” The company also agreed to pay $11 million in restitution to eligible customers.

As part of a joint investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the states, LifeLock “unlawfully exaggerated its range of services and ability to prevent ID theft.”LifeLock is NOT allowed to state that its products:

- provide “complete protection” against ID theft

- prevent unauthrorized changes to customers’ address information

- constantly monitors activity on its customers’ credit reports

- ensure a customer will always receive a phone call from a creditor before a new account is opened.

Watchdog Bytes contacted LifeLock after the settlement was announced. Spokeswoman Cortney Lanik released this statement from Davis:

“LifeLock is pleased with this agreement, which works to set advertising standards for the entire identity theft protection industry. As FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz stated … the FTC has ensured that LifeLock has a legitimate business model going forward with honest advertising.  Notably, as part of its just-concluded investigation, the FTC reviewed both the LifeLock service and LifeLock’s current advertising to confirm that LifeLock is in compliance with all applicable legal requirements. We will abide by the terms of this consent decree because we intend to continue to be true to our core mission — to help protect you, your family and your friends from identity theft.

“We welcome federal and state efforts to regulate our industry because, at the end of the day, doing so helps to protect consumers from the risks of identity theft. Because of LifeLock’s marketing efforts, many more Americans now know of the risks of identity theft and the need to take effective action to protect themselves. LifeLock is committed to developing and applying the most advanced technologies available to help protect consumers from the consequences of identity theft. We will continue to work very closely with federal and state regulators on regulatory and best practices to protect individual consumers.

“Nothing changes as a result of this settlement because it was based on activities from over two years ago. We agreed to settle this matter in order to quickly put this behind us so we can get back to doing what we do best – helping to protect our members from identity theft.”

Some of LifeLock’s advertising claims were “unlawfully exaggerated” according to a legal settlement in which the company agrees to pay $11 million in restitution. Hey, if you can’t trust your ID theft protection company to be straight with you, who can you trust?

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber