TMW you get a $250 limit, 26% credit card in the mail

[DMFA]

...and you realize some jackass stole your wife's identity to buy clothes at Buckle.

Seriously? Buckle? That's all our identities were good for?

By the way, what credit monitoring and/or fraud protection does anyone recommend?

[DarrVao777]

DMFA wrote:

…and you realize some jackass stole your wife’s identity to buy clothes at Buckle.

Seriously? Buckle? That’s all our identities were good for?

By the way, what credit monitoring and/or fraud protection does anyone recommend?

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that

I use two:

1) MyIDCare = free of charge since I was involved in that whole SSN leak a few years ago

2) IDNotify = bundled in with the TurboTax package I purchased last year

Both seem to be doing a good job of letting me know when someone is accessing a credit line in my name. I forget which one also scans your online presence to let you know when your online passwords may have been compromised (e.g. Yahoo's big scandal x 2 this year, LinkedIn x 1, Facebook x 1)

[Craigy]

Sorry to  hear that!  Have to say I laughed when I read "buckle."   :lol:

Many credit card companies now offer free credit reporting as a perk.

Creditkarma.com is a good, free site that also allows you to check what open accounts you have, etc.

But the best thing you can do (and must do) is read through all of your statements every month.

[hightower]

Well, at least you caught it early.  Before I started monitoring our credit reports we had someone open an account with Verizon Wireless using my name/ssn.  Didn't know about it until I got a call from a debt collector stating that I owed them 1600 dollars!  Turns out someone opened an account for a phone, used the phone line for a month or two, never paid the bill of course, then verizon sent my name to a debt collection agency.  Took me nearly a year to finally clear my name from the whole thing.  I had to go to the police and everything.  ID theft sucks and is on the rise.

I keep a close eye on my credit report now.  I found errors on my report as well after all this (wrong addresses).  The whole credit industry is a mess and ID theft is only one of the things that can go wrong (mistakes on the part of the credit reporting companies are another big risk).  There's a great John Oliver episode about all of this and some of the nightmares that can happen to people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k

[notadoc]

Depending at what stage at life your at you (I mean all posters) might want to look into to doing a credit freeze.  Clark Howard has the basics/contact info here:

 

http://www.clark.com/credit-freeze-and-thaw-guide

 

 

 

[DMFA]

Yeah we had Experian's free version through our back where you get a score every month and notifications re: new inquiries. She hadn't checked hers (didn't incorporate the tile into her bank homepage) and had eight notifications re: new inquiries. Score dropped 24 points. Notified all 3 bureaus, each credit card company, the FTC, and our local police.

Got a call from another major card company that an application had just been placed for another tiny-limit, astronomical-rate card, and they were like "there's no way this is you, is it?" So they got me, too. Fortunately it was just one inquiry and no account was opened.

Pretty sure it was from the OPM Breach last year. They've got some fund set up in case we end up liable for anything, but we're told that isn't likely.