BrittanyMakes

I have a scary story to share.  I meant to share it 2 weeks ago (sorry!) but so much has happened since and I felt I should share all of the information I’ve gathered in case (heaven forbid) the same thing ever happens to you.

OK. Let me just rip the band-aid and tell you – my identity was stolen.

via

It really sounds SO silly saying it out loud.  It’s something I never thought would ever happen to me, I mean come on! I’m a type-A businesswoman for crying out loud! I watch my credit like a hawk! I’m super careful when shopping online and I only share my personal information when it’s absolutely necessary.  How could this ever happen to me?

Like many, I was one of those who shopped at Target during their breech period late last year (I mean, who didn’t shop at Target during that period??).  You might think this situation was because of Target, but in reality I only used my debit card and my bank swiftly sent me a replacement since they’re on top of that kind of stuff.  Also, I knew it wasn’t Target’s fault because it was my social security number that was stolen.  My SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER! How? Why? HOW?!

Anyway, I bring up Target because if it weren’t for them I might be oblivious at this moment that my identity was stolen.  Target signed me up for free credit monitoring as part of their diligent apology for the breech.  I couldn’t be more grateful for this!

You’re probably wondering, how did I find out? Well, it was a normal Wednesday morning when I received the first alert via email from Target’s credit monitoring service “Surveillance Alert!”.  Hmmm, that’s weird.  So I logged in to check it out… and my mouth dropped.  There were 5 (FIVE!) new inquiries on my credit for 5 retail credit cards that were opened within the last 4 business days. This is bad.

If you’re at all familiar with the credit bureau setup, there are three agencies: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.  Your credit reports from these three agencies can vary, for example information will hit one report faster than another, inquiries will post to one agency and not to another, your credit score will be different across these three reports for this exact reason.  Most credit monitoring services are linked to only one of the agencies, so as soon as I saw that I had these 5 inquiries on one report, I knew there was a huge possibility of more posting to my other reports.  Down the rabbit hole I went…

I ran my other two credit reports & scores, paid the fees to do so (the fees are super dumb but in this case I would pay anything to stop someone from stealing my identity!).  Between the 3 credit reports, I found a total of 11 (!!!) retail accounts attempted to be opened in my name.  I was flabbergasted.  Someone has my social security number, someone is opening retail credit cards in my name and maxing them out.  Someone is ruining my credit as we speak.  I felt utterly powerless!

Of course I wanted to cry and throw things, but really the only thing I could do was contact each retailer and put a stop to these accounts.  I spent the next 8 hours calling retailers, filing a police report, filing a complaint with the FTC, and opening fraud investigations with each retailer.  The amount of work I’ve had to do to clean this up was ridiculous, not to mention I’m still working on these accounts, 2+ weeks later!  I do have to look on the bright side and be thankful that each retailer has a fraud department, and that each retailer provided as much guidance and help possible to fix this situation.  I can’t imagine having this happen 10 or so years ago when this crime was really started taking place.  The crappy part about all of this is this person will most likely not get caught, and will continue to live their lives by ruining others.  I’m lucky to be as diligent as I am in monitoring my credit, and being as responsible to react so quickly.

After telling friends and coworkers about this situation I began hearing their stories like “oh someone took out a mortgage in my name” or “someone tried to cross the boarder with my identity”.  What if I was less diligent? What if I never checked my credit reports? What if I wanted to buy a house and got turned down because I didn’t know someone had ruined my credit by stealing my identity? What if one day I got calls from collection agencies saying I owed over $15K in credit card debt that I never even knew about?! $15K is about as much as this person who stole my identity was granted in credit from using my identity.  I can’t even imagine.

Moral of the story: check your credit regularly.  By law everyone is entitled to 3 free credit reports each year (www.annualcreditreport.com).  Put reminders on your calendar, run these reports every 4 months and make sure no one is living their lives at your expense.  This can happen to anyone.  If it happened to me, it can happen to you.

*Update* I’ve been asked if this affects my credit score.  Absolutely it does, which is the WORST part of this mess!  Until these fraud investigations close and the credit bureau blocks additional information from hitting my credit, each one of these hard inquiries and balances will negatively affect my credit score.  Every inquiry that is reported to your score (like a credit application or credit check), regardless if an account is actually opened, drops your score.  I’ve been told it will take on average 90 days for each account to be resolved.  Let’s hope it happens sooner!