FICO will make a major change for consumers with lower credit activity volume

Fair Isaac will make a change to FICO score calculations in early 2019, according to Anna Maria Abdriottis of the Wall Street Journal. 

FICO will consider how a consumer manages cash accounts with checks, deposits and withdrawals as well as traditional repayment behaviors.  It is believed this will improve the scores for many consumers with little credit history but stable finances.

When I worked for Chilton in Dallas in the 1980s, the colloquial name for FICO was "risk predictor". 

Credit freezes -- they're free!! (and hard to find on websites)

As Ann Carnns reports in the New York Times, credit freezes are now free, and many feel people should do it.  Here is the article as of Sept. 14. 

But the freeze scripts are often buried deep within websites, as companies try to see you pleonastic monitoring services.  

The free freezes were part of Trump’s financial re-regulation package.

The AARP related that just 14% of its members use the freezes.

  

Experian (aka TRW aka Chilton and Pinger) has a detailed page on credit freezes here. 

Rideshare identity theft involving "rented" driver accounts

NBC in San Francisco has reported a scheme of “rideshare driver identity theft”, where brokers set up accounts on Lyft (and possibly Uber) and allow others to “rent” the accounts without going through the usual background checks.

NBCBayArea has a detailed report here .

  

The report lists eight ways to identify your driver, and the flaws with each method. A driver who does not respond to a text may well be fraudulent.

Porch thieves use stolen personal data to create fake credit accounts in homeowner's names

WJLA7 has uncovered a new identity theft scam, whereby thieves who have obtained stolen personal information from a security breach on the Internet, order credit cards in the victim’s name and steal them from a porch before the victim comes home. Here is the story. 

The scheme only works with houses or townhouses accessible from the street where the thief has a home address that matches normal credit reporting company records.

   

In some cases, thieves stake out FedEx or UPS or even US Mail deliveries. Homeowners can stifle the plans with camera surveillance, but often don’t find out until they see a credit report or a bank texts them about an unusual charge.