This has been verified on Snopes.com and by the FBI.  http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced.

Fall for it and your identity could be stolen, reports CBS. In this con, someone calls pretending to be a court official who threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you didn’t show up for jury duty. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo! Your identity just got stolen.

The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. This scam is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they’re with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

According to Javelin Strategy and Research about 24 million customers have signed up for credit monitoring services. For $60-$180 per year, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion state they can protect you from identity theft by regularly watching for changes in your credit report. Unfortunately, credit monitoring is overrated and overpriced.

1. Credit Monitoring often only monitors one credit bureau. Since creditors don’t always report to all three credit bureaus, you may be missing out on important notifications.
2. Speed of notification is a problem. Some credit monitoring services report only once per week. In addition, delays in reporting information by the credit bureaus means notifications could take up to 45 days to go out. Consumers need information quickly if their identities are in jeopardy.
3. Credit monitoring is reactive and not proactive. It doesn’t stop the issuance of credit to an identity thief. It only notifies you that someone has opened an account in your name or has inquired about credit in your name.

Reviewing your Credit Reports, adding Fraud Alerts to your credit files and Credit Card/Social Security Number Monitoring are much more effective ways to prevent identity theft.

Instead of paying for credit monitoring, do the monitoring yourself by ordering copies of your credit report from all three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) and review them carefully. There can be significant differences between your reports at the three bureaus, depending on which bureau each of your creditors report to.

Four months after ordering your first bureau report, order a copy of your report from the next bureau, and four months after that, the third credit bureau. This way, you get a free copy every four months. Review the reports carefully for any unexpected activity or accounts you don’t recognize.

Adding a fraud alerts to your credit report warns potential creditors to contact you by phone before granting credit in your name. Would you rather

1. Get a phone call from a credit asking if you applied for credit or
2. Wait to get an email from a credit monitoring service letting you know an account has been opened in your name?

I think the answer is obvious.

Lastly, none of the credit monitoring services offers proactive monitoring of social security numbers and credit card. The latest identity theft prevention technology scourers internet chat rooms, FTP sites, and other directories and sites for signs of social security number and credit card number fraud. A recent Gartner Group consulting firm report states that this type of monitoring may “overtake credit-report monitoring as an effective identity theft tool by year-end 2009.” See our premium identity protect for more details on this technology.

Without a charge, freeIDENTITYprotect will guide you through the easy steps to access your free credit reports and will notify you every 4 months that it is time to order a new report. The service will also help you add a fraud alert to your credit report and will notify you when it is time to renew it.

California is a self pumping state, meaning you have to pump gas yourself. There is no attendant. Considering the weather is nearly always perfect in CA, it’s not a big deal. Since I am always questioning, have you ever tried to pump $.01 or $.02 of gas? I don’t think it’s possible to do. The pumps always start at $.03! Try it next time you fill up your tank. Where is the extra $.03 going? If a busy gas station fills 500 cars per day, that’s an extra $15/day or almost $5,500/year to the station owner.

Gas expands when it is warmer. Filling your tank first thing in the morning when the gas and your tank is cool will save you about $.15-$.20 per tank. This more than makes up for the $.03 extra the station makes.

I know many people will take advantage of others when given the opportunity. Staying on the gas station theme, identity thieves are becoming bolder and taking advantage of trusting gas station patrons. Here are a few well known scams that are easily avoided:

• Take your keys with you when you fill up your tank especially when you have family waiting in the car while you pump. I hear many stories of cars stolen with the kids still strapped in the back seat while the owner is watching the pump.
• While some trusting gas station patrons are sliding their credit card in the card reader, an identity thief pulls up next to the passenger door, or walks up to the door, opens it and takes the purse or wallet on the passenger seat. The driver doesn’t know it happened until they get home and look for their wallet. Within hours, those stolen credit cards are added to an organized crime internet site used solely to buy and sell credit card numbers. It could show up in an IRC chat room, a web site designed to buy and sell cards or an FTP site. This is a growing multimillion dollar market and is run primarily by organized crime units. Keep your passenger doors locked when pumping gas.
• Credit cards are not just stolen from gas stations. They are also stolen from gym lockers, restaurant card readers and retail stores and any other place they are used. Keep an eye on your credit cards at all times when they are being swiped, so you know they were not swiped through a second card skimmer used to record the card number.

It’s time to pump up your awareness of identity theft. In this arena, knowledge is power. Check back often for additional insight and tips on protecting your identity.

Be safe.

Identity Theft is a crime that affects 9 million people each year in the US.  The average victim spends over 175 hours trying to remedy the effects of this crime.  When it comes to Identity Theft, being prepared can save you time repairing the problem if you are an unfortunate victim.

First, if you don’t check your credit report at least every four months, I advise you to do so.  You can obtain a free credit report once per year from each of the three major credit bureaus at www.annualcreditreport.com.  If you space out the reports, every 4 months you should be looking at a free credit report from one of the three credit bureaus.

After reviewing the credit report, save a copy in a safety deposit box or fire proof safe.  This preserves a record of what your credit looks like today.  In the event of identity theft, the problem will be easier to repair if this record is available.  Every four months when a new credit report is obtained, it is added to the safety deposit box.  After one year, three credit reports will be stored.  When the fourth report is obtained, replace the last report from that bureau with the new report.  This way, you always have the most current three credit reports available.  Make sure to shred discarded reports.

Additionally, copy everything in your wallet (front and back) and any credit cards, social security cards, medical cards etc that may not be in your wallet and keep that information in the safety deposit box with your credit report.   Make sure you label the copies from your wallet “WALLET”.  In the event your wallet or purse is stolen, you have an immediate source of valuable information about what exactly is in the hands of a thief.  You also have the 800 numbers of all the credit card companies.  You can immediately call them and let them know of the theft.  Update this photocopy at a minimum once a year.

In future blogs, I will discuss additional preventative measures to protect against Identity Theft.  However sometimes it is out of your control, such as a database breach of a company you do business with.  It’s best to be prepared in the event it happens to you.