Rob Carrick is on holidays. Business reporter Pippa Norman is writing the newsletter this week in his absence.
The recent Ticketmaster security breach has left its Canadian customers worried about whether their personal information has been stolen. The ticket sales giant, which was hacked this spring, sent emails last month to potentially affected customers, informing them of the security breach and suggesting they sign up for an identity monitoring service provided by TransUnion of Canada, Inc., which Ticketmaster would pay for.
“Identity monitoring will look out for your personal data on the dark web and provide you with alerts for 1 year from the date of enrolment if your personally identifiable information is found online,” the company said in a mass e-mail.
Equifax, which along with TransUnion tracks credit scores of Canadians, also offers identity theft protections, including dark web scans, identity restoration and identity theft insurance. Other service providers available to Canadians include Credit Karma, Credit Verify and ID Assist.
With cybersecurity crimes rising fast around the world, should the average Canadian consider paying for a service to monitor their identity?
Konstantin Beznosov is a professor at the University of British Columbia, where he researches the human and social aspects of cybersecurity and privacy. In the Q&A that follows, he explains why he thinks it makes sense for some people, such as the elderly or those active on social media, to pay for an identity monitoring service. Here’s an edited, condensed version of our conversation by phone:
Q: What is an identity monitoring service?
A: It’s basically a service that, on a regular basis, checks the credit history and credit status of a person at one or more credit bureaus, and depending on the type of service and type of plan, checks the so-called dark web, where criminals sell and buy credentials they obtain for what’s known as identity theft crimes, or scams based on impersonation. If something is flagged as suspicious, then that service will reach out to the customer and notify them.
Q: What factors might put somebody more at risk of identity theft?
A: We can look at risk as a product of three factors. One is the value of assets, how many assets you have, how much value those assets hold and how much criminals value those assets. Then there are vulnerabilities. So, is it a person who is easy to scam or easy to obtain information from that can be used for identity theft? For example, people who are already active on social media share a lot of things about themselves that make it easy to impersonate them on social media. Or they’re some kind of celebrity. Or it could be a person who is not very comfortable using online services and might make mistakes like not using strong authentication because it’s too cumbersome for them. Or it might be just due to a person’s nature. For example, elderly people tend to be easier victims because they don’t know technology as well, but they have quite a few assets like pension funds and significant savings. The third factor is the presence of threat. Even if somebody is vulnerable to these scams and have quite a few assets, but there are no criminals who go after them, it doesn’t matter whether that person is vulnerable or that they have quite a few assets.
Q: How much do these services typically cost?
A: There are three tiers of plans. The basic ones can be somewhere between $10 and $20 a month, the medium tier is $20 to $30, and the premium services are between $30 and $50 a month.
Q: What are the financial pros and cons of paying for an identity monitoring service?
A survey of more than 23 million identity theft victims by the U.S. Bureau of Justice in 2021 concluded that their average financial amount of loss was US$1,160, but the median was only US$200.
So, if somebody pays, let’s say, $15 a month for identity monitoring, that means that in one year, they pay $180, which would be approximately how much the median was. Maybe in two years, they will pay more for identity monitoring than the median victim of identity theft. But that’s just financial loss. There’s also time, which I thought would be much bigger, but on average, the survey found a person spends just a few hours recovering from identity theft. Some people spent six months dealing with this issue, but for most people, it was a matter of just a few hours.
Q: So, is it still worth signing up for?
A: For some individuals, again, who have significant assets and personal information that is readily available online or they’re a public figure and as a result, it’s much easier to impersonate them, or maybe their wallets with all their passport and other documents and credit card were stolen. In these cases, it makes sense to sign up for a credit monitoring service.
Q: What should somebody do before signing up for one of these services?
A: Ideally, you want to talk to somebody who was their customer and did experience identity theft and has experience working with this identity monitoring service in recovering from that identity theft to see what their experience was.
Q: Are data breaches becoming more prevalent?
A: On one hand, we keep seeing all these data breaches. On the other hand, providers of critical services, like financial services, even social media services, are moving toward stronger authentication. The authentication is not perfect. Criminals can still find loopholes, but it’s getting harder for them to do that.
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Pippa’s personal finance reading list
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Money-Free Zone: The Glass Animals released my album of the summer in 2020 with Dreamland. This summer, they’re back with I Love You So F***ing Much and while it’s not quite reaching the same level of excellence for me, it’s still scratching the itch for some cool, crisp summer jams.
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