Tag: consumers

Many adult Americans understand the value of monitoring their financial, credit, and online activity for identity theft. With fraudulent online activity on the rise, more and more people in the United States are taking proactive steps to protect themselves against attacks from cyber criminals. However, a lesser-known threat is identity theft against children. How does child identity theft happen? In 2021, 1.25 million victims of identity theft and fraud were children, with each case costing an average of about $1,110 to resolve.[1] Since the credit scores of children are checked much less frequently than those of adults, children are considered easy targets for cyber criminals because the theft can remain undetected for a longer period of time. Children may also inadvertently share their personal information, such as birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers, on their social media channels and other places around the internet. This can make it even easier for hackers to obtain that information and commit identity theft. Why are children at risk? A child’s credit score is usually checked for the first time when they turn 18 years old, as they begin to make more adult decisions such as opening a checking account, applying for a job, or building credit. The time leading up to a child’s 18th birthday can leave them open to the threat of identity theft if the appropriate safety measures are not put into place. This is why it’s crucial for consumers with children to extend their own identity protection to their kids. How can consumers protect children from identity theft Child identity monitoring services can provide alerts of potential theft to parents and help safeguard their children’s identity and credit. These services can include social media, dark web, and social security number monitoring to ensure that children’s personal information is protected and secure across multiple areas of the internet. If a child’s identity is stolen, child monitoring services can also extend to identity theft insurance and identity restoration to help parents recover their child’s identity and minimize the damage. By implementing a child monitoring service, parents can protect the identities of their loved ones and resolve any threats of potential theft as quickly as possible. Click here to learn more [1]Yahoo.com. 2021. Child Identity Fraud Costs Nearly $1 Billion Annually, According to a New Study From Javelin Strategy & Research.

When a data breach occurs, it can have a ripple effect on your business, your employees, and your customers. Depending on the severity of the breach, large volumes of personally identifiable information – such as email addresses, birth dates, passwords, social security numbers, etc. – may fall into the hands of unauthorized people who intend to exploit that information for personal gain. While data breaches are difficult to predict, you can take proactive steps to ensure that your business and your customers are well equipped to respond quickly and drive faster resolution. Create a plan The average cost of a data breach in 2023 is $4.45 million, a 15% increase from 2020[1]. This is a considerable loss that can be devastating to a business of any size. The best strategy to mitigate this kind of loss is to be prepared with a data breach response plan. If your business experiences a data breach and you’re unprepared for it, the losses you and your customers incur can be much more serious, and the damage to your company’s bottom line and reputation can last much longer than necessary. By establishing a data breach response plan, you can limit the downside potential of an attack and considerably shorten the recovery time. This can help your business and your customers return to good standing as soon as possible. Arm your team with knowledge The IT department is no longer the only line of defense against cyberattack or data breaches. Many hackers will try to illegally obtain sensitive information from front line or associate level employees using a variety of methods like phishing, ransomware, or social engineering. This puts the responsibility of protecting company data on every employee, not just on the cybersecurity team. This is why it’s important to educate all of your employees on how to recognize potential threats of a data breach. With this knowledge, they can work collectively to keep consumers’ data safe and secure. Address your customers’ concerns effectively If a data breach happens to your business, it’s crucial to notify your customers as soon as possible. Not only should you alert them of the breach, but you should also have a protocol in place to provide up-to-date information, helpful resources, and reassurance. Whether through email, in-app notifications, or call center agents, your customer response process should include clear, frequent, and timely communication throughout the duration of the breach. Keeping your customers informed and at ease during a breach will encourage them to remain calm and feel confident to continue doing business with you. Data breaches and cyberattacks are unpredictable and can have unforeseen, long-lasting negative effects on small, medium, and large businesses alike. But if you have a solid plan, keep your employees knowledgeable about potential threats, and provide useful, timely information to your customers, you can minimize the damage of any breach on your organization. Visit our website for more information about our offerings and how Experian can help you prepare and respond to data breaches. [1]IBM. Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023.

As customer service continues its rapid shift to digital channels, consumer-finance companies have a powerful opportunity to engage customers and add value to the user experience. Credit education solutions can give customers valuable, personalized information and help lenders deliver relevant, prequalified credit offers that meet customers’ needs. The digital shift is well under way. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in its 2017 Consumer Credit Card Market Report, documents ongoing customer migration to digital platforms for every stage of the consumer interaction with creditors. In a survey of card lenders the CFPB characterizes as “mass market issuers,” which represent the majority of general-purpose and private-label credit cards issued in the U.S: In the past, mail and in-branch credit applications were the most popular conversion points for lenders, but today digital applications dominate, crushing direct mail as the biggest application generator. Beyond increasing customer acquisition and providing a channel for new applications, digital solutions are reshaping the entire consumer-finance process, creating a new end-to-end experience for banking consumers As consumers increasingly adopt digital channels for dealing with their finances, consumer finance companies face both a major opportunity and a significant challenge. Digital channels offer a powerful conduit for marketing additional products and services to customers, but fostering customer engagement with platforms can be tricky, as customer expectations are constantly evolving. The hallmark of digital channels is their convenience, which can be a double-edged sword for financial institutions. Quick, efficient digital services don’t give customers much reason to linger, and that can make it hard to create and act on cross-selling opportunities. So consumer finance companies that hope to boost engagement—and cross-sell opportunities—with their digital platforms must do so with valuable, compelling solutions—ideally interactive financial wellness tools that are personalized and highly relevant to the customer: Accenture, in its 2019 Global Financial Services Consumer Study, found significant majorities of consumers place high value on services including: Advice that is more relevant to personal circumstances Personalized services/ information that helps to reduce the risk of injury, loss, etc. Partnering with Experian, enables consumer-finance companies to provide customers with the kind of useful, high-value information customers want: Experian’s Credit Education services can help improve customers’ financial lives, Experian Identity Protection can help detect identity fraud and data theft. Experian’s credit-education services use customer credit data to help them set and track credit-improvement goals. Experian identity protection services can alert consumers immediately when suspicious activity is detected on their accounts (or in the names of their children) and can even help resolve cases of data abuse. The same access to credit data that powers Experian’s credit education services can help consumer-finance partners precision-target credit offers as their customers’ evolve in their needs and creditworthiness. Experian offers credit education and identity protection services as turnkey solutions, including fully hosted white-label platforms, hybrid options and APIs. Consumer-finance companies can quickly deploy these solutions, adapted to their own brand, to increase engagement and cross-sell opportunities and add meaningful value to the user experience. Learn more on our website

When a data breach occurs, laws and industry regulations, dictate when and if you need to notify consumers whose data might have been compromised. However, many consumers would also probably argue that you’re morally obligated, to notify them of data loss; they want you to tell them of the breach and to do so in a courteous, straightforward manner. Because of this, a breach notification letter is an integral piece of a firm’s breach response as these often are the first inkling consumers have that their information may have been compromised, and their identities might be at risk. It’s imperative those letters be efficient, effective – and perhaps most importantly – humane. A 2014 study by the Ponemon Institute and Experian Data Breach Resolution indicates consumers feel there’s room for improvement in data breach notification letters. The survey polled people who had received a data breach notification letter. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they want letters to better explain the risks and potential harms they may face as a result of the breach, 56 want the letter to disclose all the facts, and a third didn’t want the letter to “sugar-coat” the situation. A quarter wanted the letters to be more personal. The Experian Data Breach Resolution team has vast experience with breach notification letters and data breach notification regulations. In our experience, here are the five most common and egregious errors to avoid when sending a data breach notification letter: 1. Keeping the consumer in the dark about the details. Customers will want to know what information was compromised in the breach. Was it their Social Security number? A credit card number? Their home address? Consumers can’t protect themselves from further harm if they don’t know exactly what’s at risk. Don’t leave them guessing. Tell consumers exactly what information was compromised in the breach. 2. Speaking “legalese.” Reverting to legalese – highly complex verbiage largely understandable only to lawyers – is a defense mechanism for companies, and it doesn’t really help the consumer. Twenty-three percent of those polled by Ponemon said the letter they received would have been better if it had less legal or technical language. Keep letters short, factual and simply worded so that the average Joe or Jane can understand them. 3. Leaving out the ramifications and risks. It’s not enough to simply tell consumers they’ve been involved in a breach. It’s not even enough to tell them what information has been compromised. To truly empower them to protect themselves from further harm, you need to alert consumers to what those risks may be. Consider the type of data that was lost, then explain the risks that can be associated with that type of data loss. 4. Failing to offer an olive branch. Whether the breach was your fault or not, consumers will hold you responsible and they will feel they should get some kind of compensation for all the grief the breach will cause them. Providing breached customers with an identity protection product not only helps protect them, but it shields your company’s reputation, too. In the Ponemon study, 67 percent of consumers said they felt companies should offer some form of compensation – whether cash, product or service – to consumers caught in a data breach. Sixty-three percent said the company should offer them free identity theft protection and 58 percent wanted free credit monitoring.  Interestingly, 43 percent also said a sincere and personal apology might help convince them to keep their business with the breached organization.. 5. Failing to seize the chance to rebuild trust. There’s no question that a data breach undermines customer trust. Some customers will leave a breached company. Among polled customers who remained with the breached company, inertia seemed a major factor in their decision not to go elsewhere; 67 percent said they stayed simply because it was too difficult to find someone else to offer the same products or services. Less than half (45 percent) said they stayed because they were happy with how the company handled the data breach. Breach letters are actually an opportunity to begin rebuilding trust. Explain to consumers what you’re doing to reduce the risk of future breaches, and how you’re taking steps to help protect them from further harm. Despite your best efforts, a data breach can occur. When it does, the data breach notification letter is your all-important point of first contact with affected consumers. Craft it well and the letter can be a valuable tool for mitigating reputation damage and rebuilding trust. Learn more from our Knowledge Center