Is Privista For Real?

Yaron Y. Goland asks: "Yahoo has a story that talks about Privista, a company that reviews your Equifax profile on a weekly basis to warn you of identity theft. Their service is free, they seem to make money by selling access to you in an environment where you control what soliciters know about you. It sounds great, but how much can you really trust Privista? Anyone have any facts about them?"

Privista

[cdwan]

This is basically what I do already. After several years of fighting various schools, companies, and employers to keep my Social Security Number private...I've accepted that it, as well as my credit card number will be stolen at some point.

The best I can do is to compartmentalize as much as I can (so the theft can't leak too far) and watch all of these accounts for weird activity.

I'll probably use this service.

-C

Confidence level not high

[anymouse]

Privista's privacy policy sounds good, but they use JavaScript on their web site, which doesn't inspire a high degree of confidence that they know what they are doing. They also say they use the Privacy Council [privacycouncil.com] to audit their site. Those guys also use JavaScript. I sent Privista a note and referred them to http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/wwwsf7.html.