Identity Theft is Real!
Well, it finally happened. My personal information has been leaked so many times over the past several years by different entities, I’ve lost count. They send you the email informing you that they had a security breach, and some of your personal info has been compromised. They give you a free year of ID monitoring. Blah-blah-blah. If you’re like me, you may have gotten numb to it by now.
Well, things got real for me recently when I checked the mailbox and found an envelope from a bank that I don’t do business with. I make a point to deal with my mail timely, following the TRAF Method I’ve outlined before. So I opened the mail expecting it to be another credit card offer or something to be shredded and recycled.
To my surprise, it was an account statement! Yes, you got that right. It was an account statement from a bank that I don’t do business with!!! My name and address are linked to a bank account that I have never heard of. Once the initial panic calmed down (I admit I freaked out for a few moments), I settled down and remembered that I subscribe to Zander ID Theft protection. I told myself, “It’s gonna be OK.”
I called Zander and reported the incident. They got to work right away and assigned an agent to help me. Soon, Andrea reached out and coached me through what needed to happen.
After doing a little research we confirmed that the bank letter was legitimate. A quick Google search concluded that the address and phone number listed on the letter were real and linked to the bank in question. So I called the bank’s fraud department and reported that the account had been opened fraudulently. They responded quickly and closed the account at my request, and sent follow-up letters to confirm that action had been taken.
We pulled our credit report to see if there was any suspicious activity happening there. And there was. You could see where the bank had made an inquiry when the checking account was opened. We saw a lot of other soft inquiries where different finance companies had inquired to see about sending me unsolicited credit offerings. Not that I would accept them. They obviously don’t know how much I dislike credit!
For example, I had been to a big-box home improvement store earlier in the week to purchase some building supplies for a project we’re working on at home. Since I didn’t use their store card to make the purchase, they apparently thought it would be a good idea to check my credit and send me an offer for their card! Annoying, but not really harmful.
But there was another suspicious entry. A state office of unemployment had made an inquiry. “Why would they do that?”, I asked Andrea. Well, because these fraudsters apparently applied for unemployment insurance - in my name - in a state where I don’t even reside! Unbelievable!!! So now I have to report this potential fraud to another state’s office of unemployment.
I also learned about ChexSystems, a system that banks use to validate customers opening new accounts. I placed a fraud alert in their system so that they know my identity has been compromised and not to open any new accounts without some extra scrutiny.
We filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), describing what happened, in order to help them get a better handle on this problem at the national level. They also provide a clear check-list of things to do in order to recover from ID theft.
Next, we placed a fraud alert with the credit reporting agencies (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax). This alerts companies to be extra cautious when opening new credit accounts. And since I don’t like or want any new credit accounts, I put a credit freeze on my account through all three agencies. That locks things down so that no new accounts can be opened unless I unfreeze the account.
Oh, and while I was doing all this work with the credit reports I found that someone was reporting I had an account open that I had paid in full and closed years and years ago! So I had to engage with this company to close the account and report it as closed. They confirmed it had been closed years ago, and said they couldn’t trigger an update to the credit agencies. They said I would need to file a dispute with the agencies. OK, so I did that too. I went into each of the three credit reporting agencies and filed a dispute on this one account that was showing up across all three of them. Whew!
Finally, Andrea reviewed all of the credit reports with me looking for any suspicious activity that I had not identified. This gave me an extra sense of confidence when she went through them and agreed that there was nothing else there to be concerned with.
So that’s my real-life story of identity theft. I hope and pray that it never happens to you. If you don’t have ID Theft coverage, you may want to consider Zander. For me, that $145 per year is worth it.
