Do You Know Your "ID Score"?

Everyone has heard of credit scores, but bet you are not familiar with "ID scores." Under changes to the Fair Credit Reporting Act going into effect on August first, financial institutions and others will have to have methods in place to detect and respond to instances of ID theft. As a result of this, more companies will want to assure themselves that customers they do business with are really who they say they are. To do this, they may use third party applications that help verify your identity. A popular system is to check your ID score -- a number from 1 to 999, where the higher the number the more likely that ID fraud is a possibility. You can get a free copy of your id score (based on one company's calculations) at MyIdScore. You will be asked to optionally input your social security number, among other things. Without your SS#, the system will render a significantly higher score than with it. (MrConsumer's ID score was 70 with, and 303 without.)