Id Theft Stories
I’m finally going to admit it – I HAD MY IDENTITY STOLEN! I have kept that secret for almost a year. At the time, I was too humiliated to tell anyone and felt partially responsible for not being more careful. I finally told a friend at work, who candidly responded the same thing happened to her. After that, I shared my story with my other coworkers and it turned out several of them had their identity stolen as well. A company investigation later found that the President’s assistant was using employee information to apply for credit cards. I was angry at myself for not sharing my story earlier and possibly preventing others from becoming victims. Our company now purchases LifeLock for all of our employees. Please share your identity theft story!
Here are identity theft horror stories from LifeLock.com:
* Before becoming a member of LifeLock, one victim had two homes purchased and furnished using her name and personal information. Then, to add insult to injury, the thieves took out second mortgages on both homes as well.
* Another had his identity stolen at age 7, but didn’t find out until ten years later when he was denied a student loan and a job due to poor credit. He was 17 years old and $40,000 in debt because someone had purchased a houseboat in his name. He struggled for 10 years to clear his name.
* One victim even had his identity stolen by a man who went on to commit rape and murders using the victim’s name.
I took my mother to the movie theater a couple weeks ago, and her entire wallet was stolen out of her purse. We don’t remember who was sitting behind us, but they got everything: credit cards, checks, Driver’s license, etc. The worst part is she didn’t even notice it until later that night, so when we finally made a police report, there really wasn’t anything they could do. We tried to put stop payments on checks, close accounts, and contact the credit card companies, but the thief still managed to use about ten of her checks. Within a week, she had bill collecting agencies contacting her, sending her threatening letters, and the bank made her do all this extra work, like getting a copy of the police report and having the whole incident notarized. It was a nightmare and incredibly stressful. Thankfully, most of the issues are cleared up now, but the whole family is thinking about getting LifeLock because none of us ever want to go through that again.
About 7 years ago, when identity theft was just taking off, I fell victim to a scam that I wasn’t even aware of. Credit card companies still sent actual credit cards in their pre-approval mailings and one was stolen out of my mailbox. A year later, I received a collection notice that over $2000 was charged at a retailer blocks away from my home. It took me over 19 months to fight the charge, and an additional 12 months to get it removed from my credit. I most likely spent over 50 hours trying to fight this single attack and hundreds of dollars in mail, research and fees to get it cleared up. Since then I have been looking for a service just like yours – and I signed up today. Thank you for being there and I hope I never have to use your service, but it is nice to know you are there and ready to go to bat if it happens again.
What a crock.
One phone call to place a fraud alerts on all three files.
Put a password on all of your credit accounts.
Use a locked mailbox.
COST: $0