The Federal Trade Commission is looking for comments on whether it should change rules around financial institutions and creditors around identity theft.
Questions are being asked around the steps taken by these institutions around detecting identity theft affecting their customers. It comes after identity theft was the second biggest category for consumer complaints in 2017 and third largest for the first three quarters of 2018.
During the periodic review of the Commission’s rules and guides, it wants to know if the Red Flags Rule and the Card Issuers Rule need to be adapted.
The Red Flags Rule requires financial institutions and certain creditors to deploy a written identity theft prevention program to reveal ‘red flags’ of identity theft during daily operations and take steps to prevent it and reduce damages.
Its Card Issuers Rule necessitates debit and credit card issuers implement policies and procedures which assess the validity of a change of address request if within a short period they also request an additional or replacement card for the account. This rule refrains the issuer to send a card until the cardholder is notified and validated.
Questions being asked include if there is a continuing need for the specific provisions of the rules, what benefits these rules have given consumers, what ‘significant’ costs have been posed to consumers or business, and if there are any types of creditors not covered by the rules which should be as the offer of maintain accounts in danger of identity theft.
The deadline for comments is 19 February 2019.
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