By JON CHESTO
BOSTON—Bill Loesch
has been trying to clean his credit record ever since a tenant in his Dorchester
house used his identity to buy more than $4,000 in computer equipment six years
ago.
Loesch says his downstairs
tenant created a fake account after stealing his mail, and he only found out
about the charges after she moved out of the state.
Now, he is hoping that others in Massachusetts don't have to go through the
same nightmare he faced. Loesch, a health educator at the Codman Square Health
Center, is among the people who plan to testify at the State House on Thursday
in favor of legislation that makes it tougher for identity thieves to operate.
''My hope is that the state is able to file something that puts pressure on
these corporations that basically OK things over the phone without any verification,''
Loesch said.
Loesch was referring to bills that would give all Bay State residents the ability
to block access to their credit reports. A credit ''freeze,'' as it is known,
would make it difficult to set up credit card accounts illegally in someone
else's name.
The Legislature's Consumer Protection Committee will hear testimony about bills
that call for such security freezes. The committee also plans to discuss legislation
requiring a financial company to notify consumers if their data has been exposed
to a potential identity thief.
Massachusetts isn't alone: Such provisions have been a hot topic for state legislatures
across the country in the wake of a series of well-publicized identity thefts
and data breaches. Most recently, a security breach was exposed on Friday at
CardSystems Solutions, a credit card processor, that led to the theft of up
to 200,000 accounts and left up to 40 million accounts vulnerable.
Georgia-based data broker ChoicePoint was forced to go public in February with
the news that personal information for about 35,000 California residents had
been compromised because it was the only state in the nation that required such
notifications at that time. Under public pressure, ChoicePoint later identified
nearly 110,000 consumers in other states who might have been affected.
Since the ChoicePoint incident, legislatures in eight other states approved
similar notification requirements, said Eric Bourassa, a consumer advocate with
the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group.
''In the past six months, we've seen states doing this left and right,'' Bourassa
said. ''It seems like every week in the newspaper there's a different security
breakdown, and a lot of people are taking action. We want Massachusetts to take
action as well.''
Sen. Michael Morrissey, a Quincy Democrat and the co-chairman of the Consumer
Protection Committee, filed a notification requirement bill in March.
Morrissey said yesterday that he still wants to push for the bill's passage,
although it may need some changes. He said he's heard concerns from financial
companies about the length of time the bill would allow for internal investigations
before customers would have to be notified.
Morrissey said he hasn't made up his mind on the security freeze proposals,
but he's leaning toward supporting one. He said he wants to learn more about
the pros and cons of passing such a reform.
