SITUATION/CHALLENGE - As an identity theft victim, I experienced the frustration first hand. I then became a volunteer victim counselor for the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org) and a victim advocate for the Santa Barbara District Attorney's office. The problem I saw was not only is ID theft a time-consuming, costly and emotionally draining experience, but even the best non-profit (ITRC) could put even a slight dent the problem. I felt there had to be a way to use information technology, using my computer science background, to build a low cost, easy to use, service that could scale to help the millions of people affected by this each year. And any existing identity theft solutions required that the consumer, and even victims, hand over a large amount of personally identifying information, sometimes even power of attorney, to the third party provider, which is itself an ID theft risk.
Recovering and repairing the damage caused by ID theft is still too complicated, expensive and time consuming. Victims must deal with a confusing morass of credit reporting agencies, creditors, service providers and government agencies. There are dozens of phone calls, forms, and letters to be completed and these vary depending on the nature of the theft and where you live. It can take many months or years to clear up the problem—with this time often needlessly lengthened because of the lack of information needed to act quickly and decisively. Consumers often face many wrong turns and dead ends which could be avoided with the right instructions.
How the problem was addressed before Truston:
Businesses generally punt on the issue, like with identity theft, making it very frustrating for victims to solve their problem. For instance, if you are an identity theft victim, a bank might provide a tiny half-page pamphlet that talks about identity theft in general. This often results in upset customers and negative brand image. Even ID theft service companies provide simplistic assistance like a telephone call center where a representative reads from a script and then simply has a generic pre-printed help kit mailed to the victim.
Consumers are left to their own devices, and usually, because of their busy lives, are unable to fully solve the problems, resulting in stress, lost time and easily avoidable costs like a reduced credit score or paying off a fraudulent debt to make a problem go away.
Name: Tom Fragala
Title: CEO and Founder
Company: Truston
SOLUTION - Our solution to the identity theft problem is MyTruston™, the only fully online identity theft recovery system. It is hosted web-based software that can help millions of people easily recover from and prevent identity fraud. It can handle any type of ID theft and fraud. MyTruston™ walks victims step-by-step through the entire process—dramatically reducing the time, financial cost, and emotional impact. Other services require you to give them sensitive personal information, which puts your identity at risk. That information goes into someone's hands and into a database, both of which are security risks. With myTruston, all we need is your email address.
Because it is a web-based platform, it can scale to meet the needs of a huge number of consumers. It can also grow to support a virtually unlimited number of fraud types—with far less incremental cost than services which rely on telephone support. For example, today MyTruston supports recovery from these fraud scenarios: existing credit card, new credit account, ATM/Debit card and phone/utility. Over time, we will be rolling out support for recovering from fraud related to checking accounts, mortgages, driver’s licenses, passports, state and federal government benefits, military victims, loans, and more.
MyTruston assists the average person in solving complex problems like identity theft without the need for expert or professional assistance. It helps determine if an issue in the particular area actually exists (i.e. are you an ID theft victim?), establishes the extent of the problem, and takes the user through a series of self-guided, context-sensitive steps to solve the problem. To do this, we designed an architecture that takes complex, multi-threaded sets of actions and guidelines and renders them as sets of discrete, discernable, and repeatable steps. This is done without requiring detailed or confidential information from the user. Though this system can be applied to a wide range of problem areas, our first application of this system has been in the recovery from and prevention of identity theft, as embodied in a product called MyTruston.
We sell myTruston direct to consumers at www.mytruston.com and offer our software to partners such as financial institutions and affinity groups. Our private-label partners will typically bundle our solution with their own ID theft product suite, under their brand. For example, our online ID theft recovery service might be included with credit monitoring and insurance.
Milestones: We began work on the concept in early 2005, build first a proof of concept web site later that year. Then we build a working prototype while doing usability testing. From there we created our first "beta" release product in mid 2006 and then our first public launch of the product was February 2007. We were awarded 4 stars from PC Magazine soon thereafter.
Info Security Products Guide
CONCLUSION - Our customers are both consumers directly and companies that offer identity theft protection products to consumers. Our service will help slash the $55 billion in yearly financial losses suffered by consumers, creditors, banks, and insurers.
Our channel partners gain because we help address these problems:
Grow revenue/add subscribers
Differentiation
Customer retention/more touch points
Reduce support costs
Better return on ad spend
Consumers gain because every person is vulnerable to identity theft. It could be through a lost wallet, stolen documents or a data breach. Even infants have had their identities stolen for financial gain. The effects of identity theft are devastating: there were around 15 million US victims in 2006. It cost consumers $5 billion and businesses $50 billion. There are 220 million credit active consumers in the US—all vulnerable to this fraud.
The magic behind our service is the patent-pending technology platform we have developed. It is a self-service task scheduling engine that reduces red tape for consumers. It allows non-programmers (Truston or a partner) to build simple consumer-facing tools that help with processes which require many steps, phone calls, documents, or follow-ups. Consumers benefit by using a simple self-guided set of instructions for dealing with otherwise confusing, time-consuming and frustrating tasks. Partners benefit by increasing customer satisfaction, reducing service costs and offering a differentiating service.
Read testimonials and accolades from consumers and industry experts about Truston here: http://www.mytruston.com/press/buzz/index.html
The seed for the idea behind Truston was planted in 2002, when Tom experienced identity theft first hand. Thieves broke into his previous company’s offices and stole a number of laptops, bags and identities, including his own. What inspired Tom most, however, was his work after this as a volunteer helping victims of ID theft. He became frustrated by vast size of the problem and lack of tools available to help people. The alternatives were either ineffective, expensive or required handing over sensitive information—a further ID theft risk. So, Tom decided to build something better. The result is myTruston.
Since 2004, Tom has been a volunteer victim counselor with the ID Theft Resource Center, a prominent non-profit consumer advocacy group. He also served as a volunteer for the Santa Barbara District Attorney, helping victims of fraud. Tom started the first identity theft blog, ScamSafe.com, in February 2004. He has donated over 1,000 hours of pro bono victim aid since 2004.
From 1999-2003 Tom served as CEO of Vistera Inc., offering Web-based software for large hotel management companies. He was also a member of the startup team for Software.com (acquired for $7 billion in 2000), leading the information technology group. In addition, he has worked for Cambridge Technology Partners, Microsoft, and Chase Manhattan Bank. Tom has a MS in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts and a BS in Computer Science from Merrimack College.
Truston
402 E Gutierrez Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Tel: +1-800-960-5512 www.mytruston.com
