I just read last week that the Transport Security Administration, the people responsible for protecting us when we fly, admitted that thieves managed to steal two laptops contain personal records of thousands of individuals. Less than 24 hours later, Houston staffing company Administaff admitted that thieves stole a laptop containing the personal records of nearly 160,000 employees. And the next day after that, Home Depot announced that thieves made off with another laptop containing the personal records of 10,000 employees. Sound like a trend?

No matter how you slice it, identity theft continues to be a worldwide problem. Your personal information needs protection all the time, because the slightest slip-up can provide ID thieves with the opening they need.

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There’s no arguing that social networking websites like MySpace.com, myYearbook.com and Facebook.com are more popular than ever. Yet, many people don’t seem to realize that these Web 2.0 sites can pose some online identity theft and other Internet privacy issues — not only for young people, but also for parents and guardians alike.

A few weeks ago I watched as my 14-year-old niece spent most of her free time interacting with her posse of friends on Facebook. She would occasionally come up for air to make a quick phone call or check the score of a basketball game on TV, but it was very clear to me that online security wasn’t much of a concern for her – her username was her nickname and her password, the name of a local school.

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A few days ago I wrote about how the credit bureaus had to finally get behind the new credit freeze laws now available in dozens of states.

That prompted an email from a reader who wanted to know if a credit freeze is the same as a fraud alert. And I thought it was a pretty good question that seems to confuse a lot of people.

There is a major difference between the two: a fraud alert is essentially a note that you attach to your credit report, through a credit bureau, that alerts any potential creditor that you may be the victim of identity theft and that they should confirm your identification before granting any new credit in your name.

A credit freeze is designed to prevent anyone from getting any credit in your name. For creditors to grant new credit they first have to do a credit check on your report, and a freeze blocks that. No credit check, no new credit.

If you want to allow a specific creditor to run a credit check on your behalf (because you want to apply for a new credit card or a car loan), you’ll need to “unfreeze” your report using a PIN or password that will be provided to you when you first initiate the freeze.

Hope that clears up any confusion. More to come.

In a complete and unavoidable about turn, the three main credit bureaus are now championing the value of consumers using a credit freeze to protect against identity theft. A credit freeze prevents new credit being opened without the permission of the consumer and more than 40 states have introduced credit freeze laws in the last few years.

When you set up a credit freeze you'll usually be given a security PIN, and every time there's a credit inquiry to any of the credit bureaus or someone tries to obtain new credit in your name, you can use the pin to allow or reject the credit request.

But if the credit bureaus had their way there would be no such thing as a credit freeze. According to a recent article in USA Today the three credit bureaus spent $1.4 million last year touring every state in the nation to try to persuade lawmakers that credit freeze laws were a bad idea.

Thankfully our lawmakers didn’t buy their hollow arguments, so in an effort to save some face each of the three bureaus recently announced their plan to finally offer credit freezes to consumers, but for a price ($10 per freeze, free if you can prove that you’re a victim of identity theft). A Transunion spokesperson even described the progress as “groundbreaking” although she might have been referring to their inevitable cave in.

A few days ago I mentioned efforts by TJ Maxx to settle the first class action lawsuits stemming from its massive data breach earlier this year.

One of the many questionable components of the settlement was TJ Maxx' offer of a $30 voucher for affected customers. But at the same time as TJ Maxx was admitting that it wasn't in a position to even let all affected customers know about the offer, a judge set to hear the lawsuit questioned the validity of a voucher that would only be valid at a TJ maxx or related store.

Instead he suggested a simple cash payment, something that could cost TJ Maxx a lot more.

Good on ya, Judge. Time for TJ Maxx to take its punishinment and pay up.