Identity theft protection

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Does anybody use one of the identity theft companies? LifeLock, Experian, etc. I've had two weird inquiries lately. One person opened a Charles Schwab account using my home address, but their name. When we contacted them, CS already knew it was a fraudulent account and was investigating. I then, just received a call at the shop from a mortgage company saying that someone else tried to refinance this building using their name and my work address and phone number.
 
i have an account with MyID care, but its paid for by work for the obvious reasons that someone gets a free account, the watch is nice, but if you freeze your credit at all 3 agencies its not really doing much . . . . They do give some interesting information (beyond just ID theft monitoring) but I dont think i would pay for the service myself.
 
Fat Trout said:
Everyone should do this. Slight hassle at times but worth the hassle.
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agreed, its something i picked up at a financial wellness class that work sponsored and while its a bit of a pain when you need new credit, how often does that actually happen? for us its been <1/year
 
About 10 years ago my wife's identity was stolen due to a keystroke virus on the home laptop that the kids downloaded from some stupid web site. Ironic since I am an IT professional but I can't block every fake web site they used to find as tween-agers who knew more than me.

They gleaned a whole bunch of public information off the web (ie your property tax records are public) and attempted to open 500+ different AmeriTrade accounts which I only became aware of when the mailman dropped off all the "New account" envelopes at my house. They used every possible combination of my first, middle, last name along with my wifes and our home address but luckily the lead investigator for AmeriTrade called the police and my house to advise us of the issue. We had a few more incidents like her credit card being cloned and used in LA to try and buy $9,000 of vape products too.

Ever since then I have the whole family under multiple credit alerts, including my 3 kids SSN and it's helped block a few loan applications and credit card things along the way. Plus my work offers it to the whole family for free under Allstate's Identity alert service.

So I probably have this covered 5 different ways and spend about $200 a year on this stuff but it's worth every penny. The police investigator told me we were lucky since most stories don't end that well and they can rarely catch the people who do this stuff.
 
My info was compromised when some institution got hacked, so I got like 7 years free LifeLock.
Was pretty seamless aside from trying to open new accts, but in my mind worth the hassle to know thinks were protected.
 
rick81721 said:
We've had lifelock for years. No problems - @Minimum Wage claimed he could hack me when I posted my name and birth date via my covid vaccine card months ago but guess he failed
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All I said was your name and zip is unique enough to get the rest of your information, I am also in a position of privilege where I have that information at hand.

Only hack associated with me is being a hack
 
Minimum Wage said:
All I said was your name and zip is unique enough to get the rest of your information, I am also in a position of privilege where I have that information at hand.

Only hack associated with me is being a hack
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Which means what? Can you get my SS#? if so, PM!
 
Seems like another hack is stealing the home titles of homes that don't have a mortgage. We've got the free LifeLock for a few years, but I really hope I don't have to seriously consider getting some sort of home title lock, so no crooks can take out a home equity loan or mortgage on my house.

Wondering if anyone on here has home title lock.
 
Along those lines, I had an earlier compromise-
Despite alerting like 7 different departments of my change of address, my school continued to send mail to my old addy.
Downside?
They still used SSN as student ID.

So about a year removed from said address, I start getting collection letters.
With my SSN and a fake license, they were able to get a temporary “card” at Macy’s and racked up about $700 in charges.
Chumps.
Got that cleared up, but found out they also tried multiple times to open mortgages.
I don’t even know how that would work long term, but thankfully I had a shitty credit rating at the time so they weren’t approved.
 
jackx said:
Seems like another hack is stealing the home titles of homes that don't have a mortgage. We've got the free LifeLock for a few years, but I really hope I don't have to seriously consider getting some sort of home title lock, so no crooks can take out a home equity loan or mortgage on my house.

Wondering if anyone on here has home title lock.
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This seemed like a scam on face value but never bothered to look into it - turns out it's not a scam but basically worthless and unnecessary.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/title-lock-insurance-is-a-waste-of-your-money
 
jmanic said:
Along those lines, I had an earlier compromise-
Despite alerting like 7 different departments of my change of address, my school continued to send mail to my old addy.
Downside?
They still used SSN as student ID.

So about a year removed from said address, I start getting collection letters.
With my SSN and a fake license, they were able to get a temporary “card” at Macy’s and racked up about $700 in charges.
Chumps.
Got that cleared up, but found out they also tried multiple times to open mortgages.
I don’t even know how that would work long term, but thankfully I had a shitty credit rating at the time so they weren’t approved.
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That sucks…especially about those chumps trying to open a mortgage on your home.
 
About 25 years ago my identity was stolen. Out of the blue I get a call from Discover Card, which I very rarely used and hadn't used in over a year, and asked why I haven't been paying my bills. I told them I haven't used that card in over a year. With some questions and answers back and forth they asked if I'm still at some address in Michigan. I told them I don't live in Michigan. In fact, at the time I have never even been to Michigan so they sent my account to their fraud department. As it turns out some scammer told Discover Card that I had moved to Michigan and asked for a new card to be sent there to the new address and also changed my phone number to that new address. So that went on for a while until the scammer stopped answering call from Discover Card. So DC searched for one of the previous phone numbers on record (my actual) number and that's how they got a hold of me. So they took care of the balance, closed that account and opened up a new one, and cleared it with the credit agencies but as of today somebody somewhere still has me on record as having lived in Michigan. Now I get calls all the time by people with deep west Asian accents named "Mike Williams" and the like telling me to listen carefully, write things down, and confirm my name. I have fun on occasion with them by saying stuff like yes, I did order the iPhone from Amazon for $1099 or give them fake info. But most of the time I just ask them how they got my number when the number they called me on was never used on any of my accounts. As for ID protection, I get it for free from my work due to a hack into their personnel system a while back. But I have been hearing a lot about home title lock protection. What's up with that?
 
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tonyride said:
About 25 years ago my identity was stolen. Out of the blue I get a call from Discover Card, which I very rarely used and hadn't used in over a year, and asked why I haven't been paying my bills. I told them I haven't used that card in over a year. With some questions and answers back and forth they asked if I'm still at some address in Michigan. I told them I don't live in Michigan. In fact, at the time I have never even been to Michigan so they sent my account to their fraud department. As it turns out some scammer told Discover Card that I had moved to Michigan and asked for a new card to be sent there to the new address and also changed my phone number to that new address. So that went on for a while until the scammer stopped answering call from Discover Card. So DC searched for one of the previous phone numbers on record (my actual) number and that's how they got a hold of me. So they took care of the balance, closed that account and opened up a new one, and cleared it with the credit agencies but as of today somebody somewhere still has me on record as having lived in Michigan. Now I get calls all the time by people with deep west Asian accents named "Mike Williams" and the like telling me to listen carefully, write things down, and confirm my name. I have fun on occasion with them by saying stuff like yes, I did order the iPhone from Amazon for $1099 or give them fake info. But most of the time I just ask them how they got my number when the number they called me on was never used on any of my accounts. As for ID protection, I get it for free from my work due to a hack into their personnel system a while back. But I have been hearing a lot about home title lock protection. What's up with that?
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see post from @rick81721

basically its not even insurance its more just a "monitoring service" to check if anyone decided they have free time to forge your signature and file a deed to your house with the local government. But even if they alert you to a potential attempt do to that, they do nothing to help fix it legally or otherwise.

Marketing hype to stir up worries so they can make some money. as someone who also had identities stolen in our household I would not bother with this.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/title-lock-insurance-is-a-waste-of-your-money
 
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