by Kerry L. Thomas

Created on: August 12, 2008

We are living in a world where identity theft is rampant. One of the things that I feel helps drive this escalating crime is none other than third party collections agencies. As the name implies, these are third parties that operate to collect debts for original creditors.You are very likely to run across these types of collection agencies if you fall behind on your debt obligations.

What's the problem with these agencies? Few people may realize that the original creditor has turned your private financial information over to these agencies. The issue here is that you only need to do a little research to see that some of these agencies are less than honest in their business dealings.

In fairness, there are honest people that work within these organizations. The problem is that there also some very questionable people that either own or work in these types of agencies. Once the original creditor has turned your personal financial information over to these companies, then they have little if any control over the safety and security of your data.

Third party collectors are required to do background checks on their employees, however these are notorious for being outsourced as well. Background checks seldom catch problem employees because the checks themselves are not conducted properly.

Right now in this country, original creditors are giving personal financial data to third parties that shouldn't have access to this data. You may be shocked to find out that your personal financial data is in the hands of collection agencies with horrific records in regards to their efforts to comply with the applicable laws governing the collection process.

This whole process has serious security flaws that leaves you vulnerable to identity theft. Every single time your private data changes hands the odds are greater that it can be compromised.

One could argue that this industry is regulated,however, there is simply no way to effectively enforce the regulations to the point needed to protect the average consumer.

In my opinion the only way to minimize the risk and help protect the data is to shut down the exchange of information. Original creditors should be required by law to perform their own collections and safeguard the consumer's data. Even this option will not be completely safe, but I feel it removes the additional risk associated with handing someone's personal financial data over to a company that may not be setup to adequately secure the data.

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