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My experience with identity theft
My experience with identity theft
Well I haven't become a victim yet, but a couple days ago I forget to lock my truck and somebody went through it that nite, they stole my cd collection (thank got I cdr copy all of my cds and DO NOT keep the originals in the truck). My 1gig USB2 thumb drive and an $8 pair of mini binoculars (Walmart!) and my second wallet which contains useless items like my those "buy 9 meals get the 10th free" cards for various places, a couple discount cards for grocery stores and other useless stuff that I need to have, but don't neet to carry.
Unfortunately I made the HUGE mistake of putting my social security card in this wallet (news to me, the SS office says to put your SS card in a locked & secure place, DO NOT carry it with you). I also had my car registration in there but that's a trivial issue.
Bizarrely they left items that were/could have been more useful. Currently I am living with my Mother In Law (it's a good thing, I swear) and my house is for sale in another town, about 30mins away. They didn't steal my spare home keys that were in the glove box, nor did they take any of the 3 pair of sun glases, nor did they take the $.75 in change I had sitting in plain eye view, nor did they take my enterprise copy of Win 2003 Std Edition sitting by itself in the passenger seat, nor did they take a rather fancy pepperspray I have sitting next to my gear shift.
The good news is, I walked down the street after I realized the theft and 20ft away, I found my cd collection (I have them in a binder) without a single CD stolen... I guess the thief didn't like CDrs, maybe his old cd player can't play them, or maybe he didn't like my choice in music. I went to work, and on the way home I decided it would me wise to walk past my road and around a few blocks, low and behold a block and a half away I found my USB2 thumb drive but here's the funny part.... they had untied and stole the nylon necklace from the USB drive but threw a $150 computer device on the sidewalk. It had sat there for almost 18hrs and ironically nobody saw it, or didn't know what it was to pick it up. LOL! While I could care less about the binoculars as I never used them anyways, I'm very unhappy about my SS card being stolen. While thank god they didn't get something more important as my id, credit cards, etc a SS card alone can be used to open accounts for cell phones and services (power, rent, water bill) as well as use a SS number to get a job, or if you get arrested. I actually had no idea a social security card was, even though IMHO a SS number seems rather easy to get ahold of. The sickest of all scams is that if a person gives your SS# during an arrest and skips the trial, an arrest warrant is written up IN YOUR NAME! It seems the government relies on SS #s way too much, grr.
So I started to do some homework and thankfully the FTC and the SS office have better than expected websites on help with preventing theft. I have called the 3 major credit bureaus and put a "theft alert" on my credit account so anytime somebody (including me) tries to open any kind of account (cell, power, rent) there is a comment that I am the possible victim of identity theft and (hopefully) that company will take extra steps to make sure I am really me.
Of course the weakest link here is that it's really up to that company to do the check, and considering how eager cell phone sales people are to make a sale & a commission, I don't have much faith here. At this point I'm seriously considering waiting about 7 days, and contacting all the major companies in the area about power, water bills, and cell phone places (ugh there are dozens of them) and seeing if I have any account with them, to make sure no accounts have been taken out in my name.
One final note, I also learned that it's possible somebody might use my SS to change my mailing address to make sure that bills do not come to my house. That's a very slick & nasty thing to do and I will keep in mind that if I don't get any mail for an entire week, a huge red flag will come up in my mind.
The only safe thing to do is assume the worst and assume the person plans to exploit anybody identity upon stealing of items from people's cars.
If you read this far, I'm sure you're as surprised how powerful a SS# is, and I really inist you do your homework and know the risks as well as read the SS/FTC webpages as they give you some really good ideas how to protect yourself.
SS Theft page: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10064.html
General SS Theft Faq: http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/ssa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=329
FTC Identity Theft Page: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/idtheft.htm
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