Identity theft

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Identity theft

So I can now count myself as one of the unlucky members of a crappy club to be in. I got a phone call last night from a credit card company stating that a Lowe's account had been opened in my name with my SS#. Luckily, it was flagged for investigation right away because the account was opened in FL and I live in PA. They're closing it and placing it under investigation. I just have to wait through the 60-90 day process for it to be officially declared fraudulent, then it's wiped from my credit reports completely.

But, I spent the majority of last night calling my banks, credit card companies, and filing a police report. They suggested I do that, in addition to informing the DMV, because if this person ever got pulled over and they used the ID that has my info on it, it could be a problem, especially if there's a warrant out for their arrest.

Good news is, I've done everything I can, including getting credit monitoring services and placing consumer fraud alerts on the big 3 credit bureau reports. The lady I spoke with today said you could do everything right and even the most vigilant person can get screwed. There's no real way to prevent ID theft from happening, you just have to do what you can afterwards to protect yourself.

And since they just opened a brand new account without my knowledge, rather than obtaining my current credit card numbers and charging the hell out of those, my credit shouldn't suffer at all, which is a great relief.

It's a total bummer that it happened. I honestly can say "I never thought it would happen to me", but at least it was a fairly minor thing, rather than the huge, credit-obliterating thing it might have been.