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12 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday January 12, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Company on alert to protect customers from identity theft By Mandi Hargrave SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER To place your business logo or name here, call your Classified Sales Representative today! 905.632.4440 A new company in Oakville set out this past summer to help protect consumers from the fastest growing crime across the world; identity theft. Unlike most consumer services, idAlerts aims to be a proactive approach against identity theft, instead of a reactive solution after your identity has been stolen. While its main goal is to protect its customers from the crime, idAlerts president and CEO Casey Goossens recognizes that it's not always possible to do this and an identity thief may somehow obtain your information. "We found that it was completely futile to try and stop identity theft or stop someone from stealing your identity. It's just not going to happen," says Goossens. "Shredding is nice. All these things are very good to do, but they won't stop an identity thief. Our technology is just too broad. It's too easy. We can't stop them from stealing it, but we can stop them from using it." That's why the company has a three-point approach to attacks on your financial security. The first step is to monitor the credit bureaus for activities on customer's profiles on a daily basis. The second is insurance to cover lost income, expenses and legal fees and the final is that they will do all the necessary paperwork to have your credit rating back in line within months, instead of years. Goossens and his partners, Joseph Pesar and Denis Peric, had been building the business for about 18 months before officially opening for business last June. The inspiration for idAlerts occurred when Pesar returned from a trade show in the United States where a company was offering identity theft protection. Pesar liked the concept, but when he returned to Canada and tried to buy some he discovered only one company offered that service in Canada, and it was an American company. The two decided there was a need for this kind of service in Canada and decided to do some homework on the subject. "We found there was a huge need for it," says Goossens. "Identify theft is the single fastest growing crime in Canada, and there's very little service to go along with that." He said this service will give LIESA KORTMANN / OAKVILLE BEAVER Casey Goossens, president and CEO of idAlerts. "We found there was a huge need for it. Identity theft is the single fastest growing crime in Canada, and there's very little service to go along with that." Casey Goossens, president and CEO of idAlerts consumers more peace of mind, especially if they're online shoppers. "It can still happen, but the chances have been reduced greatly, almost to nothing," he says. Any credit card or loan applications along with changes to your address, phone number or name are monitored and you would be notified of this immediately. "That is the one true proactive thing you can do to stop identity theft," he says. Goossens isn't the only one taking notice of the lack of protection in Canada. The federal government is now starting to take action on identity theft. Surprisingly it is not yet illegal in Canada. Bill C27 proposes to create a new criminal offence for identity theft in relation to trafficking identity information, unlawful possession or trafficking with some pieces of governmentissued identity documents and expand offences for identity fraud amongst other things. "Being in the business of identity theft means you have to be particularly astute at protecting people's identity and making sure that none of the information gets trapped or stolen from us," says Goossens. "It'd be pretty embarrassing if we lost your information. So the most sophisticated part between the credit bureau and ourselves is we never get to see your information. It never passes to us. But if you're a customer of ours, everything gets alerted through us and then we have a complete in-the-box process that occurs off-site so that the data is never compromised. It can't be compromised, not even by ourselves." Goossens' background is in running software companies and in energy management, while his partners have both previously worked in fraud departments for major financial institutions. idAlerts is partnered with TransUnion and CAA. For more information, visit www.idalerts.ca or call 905-8151551.