Protect your identity, protect your personal information, protect, protect, protect. This is being drilled into our lives every day. Don’t give out your personal information such as driver license, Social Security number. Be careful with your credit card information. Using it on line is dangerous. The media is telling us every day about new scams out there.

But wait, we have to give out that information all the time. We need to give that information to medical service providers, medical insurance, doctor’s offices and hospital. Then there is the banking institutions, they have all sorts of your information. Then you have the utilities for your home. When you call them the first thing they ask is the last four of your Social. Then there is the store credit cards and all the rewards cards you get to save a few pennies.

If we have been listening we have taken steps to protect ourselves. We have put security measures on all of our on line devices — phones, tablets, and computers.

We are assured when we give this information, by all of these institutions, that our information is secure and protected.

We hear on the news that major stores have been breached and if we shopped there and used a credit or debit card we could be at risk. Our information could have been stolen. Of course this happened two or three months ago. We get a letter in the mail from a banking institution that they have been breached. They offer us identity theft protection for 12 or 18 months. The next letter came from a couple different medical institutions. Yep you guessed they have been breached the information has been stolen or held for ransom.

Really.

Once again they offer protection for the same 12 to 18 months. These incidents were also two to three months prior to any announcement to the public.

All of these institutions are very apologetic — they don’t want to lose your business — by offering you secure protection.

What if your identity was stolen before they notified you?

What if it’s stolen after the protection is up?

The company that is hired (presumably) to protect us, from future theft for the allotted amount of time, are they legit? I don’t know I’ve never heard of them. I’ve gotten six or seven of these letters all different companies. They all ask questions about our personal information.

Are we becoming paranoid about who to trust? I am.

Laurie Laytham

Montesano