I was becoming a little smug about escaping all the nasty cyber things going on until I got my letter from OPM on Thursday. Same stuff about dependent children are covered but no mention of spouse.
And the flood of phishing attempts giving USAA or NFCU as the sender has begun for me. 6 in the last week.
abuse@usaa.com and phishalert@navyfederal.org are becoming the most frequent addresses in my sent mail folder.
I suppose that bad things also come to those who wait.
They didn't mention that you will be getting a e-mail every day from the tracking company asking you to buy more protection because your profile is incomplete. TOM
Tom,
I would report that to OPM and info the tracking company (CSID). I DID not list all my financials with them either, but did register and do not receive constant emails. I do receive monthly notice to log on and check any alerts that may have been discovered over that month. There may be a block to check to avoid weekly emails, I do not recall.
CEC
I signed up for this coverage a couple of months ago. Very easy to register. I did list my credit card and my NFCU banking accounts. I have not received any emails from MyIDCare at all other than the one after I first signed up. I check their "dashboard" on a regular basis (weekly). Nothing has popped. I guess that's good news.
More disconcerting to me is how many people have my Social Security Number. Not only did I stencil it on some of my uniform items 40 years ago, but I realize my SSN was on every EVAL or FITREP that I ever signed. And that would be an awful lot in three commands of 180 to 1,800 individuals. Yikes! - Jim
That's amazing Jim!!!! I hadn't thought about those types of disclosures.
Is the SSN still a requirement on evals and FITREPS?
I recall when it was a staple on personal checks!!!
Our info is out there in a number of ways.
As for my situations. I said before that I had signed up for the protection and to date, havn't had any problems. Same as Chuck, I get an e-mail monthly showing the status which has to date, been clean.
Pat got her letter about the same time that I received mine. She's signed up and receives the monthly status reports.
I may be a bit old-fashioned, and probably some level of paranoid as well.
I received my OPM letter. But there is no way that I would put my name, SSN, DOB, bank account numbers, and credit card numbers all in the same response or document and send it to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. This cyber world can be a minefield, and you are only as protected as the weakest link. Some geek sitting at a terminal in their basement can go anywhere they want, and do anything once they get there.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!! I said it before and I'll say it again. There are obviously "versions" of the OPM letter in circulation. My letter didn't ask for any of that!! My letter simply stated that I was being provided with security coverage for three years. It also stated that there was additional coverage available and to get that coverage, I needed to go to the suggested web site and sign on, which I did. But I did not provide any personal information.
It appeared as if the protection agency already had the information which supports George's statement that a good "geek" can go anywhere and get anything.
I was feeling pretty good about this issue until this "chatter" started taking place. Now I'm convinced that some have rcvd bogus letters and in some sense, I'm now concerned that I might be among them.
I guess the bright side is "so far, so good" but I'm feeling like some follow up might be prudent.
Agree, George. I spoke to an NCIS buddy of mine and asked him to check into it for me before I called and signed up. My letter was legit. The only information I was willing to provide for the monitoring was my name, email address and phone numbers. I do like the fact that they provide free credit history from Equifax, Experian and Transunion.
We are simple people with all banking through NFCU, no mortgage, no loans and only 2 credit cards. On card is rarely used so I'm thinking of giving them that card number as a test to see if anything strange appears. Still on the fence.
We've never had our identity stolen nor have we received any charges we were not aware of. We haven't even had a computer bug or virus to our knowledge.
That same NCIS agent gave me a bit of advice years ago that I still follow: The first address in my email contacts list is 000.000@000.000 I guess that tricks any bug or virus that gets into your system because they start at the beginning of your list and don't recognize the address as valid so they can go no further. Maybe it's not true, but we do it anyway. The one time spam was sent from my computer was the day I installed my new computer and hadn't restored my entire contacts list. Hmmm.