Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Promises of Debt Relief Meet Privacy Concerns

Why shouldn't you share your government-issued PIN (username and password) with student-debt relief organizations?


Because .... "Your PIN is the equivalent of your signature on any documents related to your student loan," Ms. DeMoss wrote. "If you give your PIN away, you give others the power to perform actions on your student loan on your behalf."
Increasingly, fraud schemes are directed at individuals with student loan debt, including data mining of national databases to obtain Personally Identifiable Information (social security numbers, etc.).  See the link below the excerpt for the entire story. 

Two weeks ago, the Education Department issued a warning to borrowers about student-debt relief companies. The department cautioned borrowers against trading personal information for private-sector assistance with student-loan consolidation.An investigation by the department’s inspector general found that some borrowers were sharing their federal student-loan personal-identity numbers with companies in the loan-service industry. According to a September 2013 report describing the inspector general’s findings, PIN sharing can create an opportunity for bad actors "to change and misuse the students’ personal data." Under the most-optimistic scenario, a debt-relief sales agent can use a borrower’s PIN to log into the student-loan database, assess an individual borrower’s debt burden, and provide the borrower with options for consolidation and repayment.
Read the story here:

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