Identity Theft

Identity theft is obviously no joking matter, and I always thought that Andrew and I were safe from it because we are careful and - without sounding too conceited - savvy consumers.

Which is why it was shocking when Andrew learned this morning that his parents were getting hassled by calls at their house from a credit card company, claiming that Andrew owed payment on a card.

Without going into specifics, the gist of the situation is that Andrew knew he didn't have a card with this company. Calling them, he found out while his social security number and home address were not associated with the overdue account, his name and phone number were both listed. After letting them know that this was a case of identity fraud, he was told that this would be noted on the account so his parents wouldn't receive any more calls. His next step was to report the crime to local police.

Ten minutes later, another harassing call came through to his parents. Andrew called the credit card company again, requested to speak to a manager and spent 30 minutes lecturing her on what was allowed Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and trying to obtain more information to pass along to the police. What this company didn't know is that Andrew spent ten months in creditor law, dealing with credit card companies and collection agencies on a daily basis and he definitely knew his rights as an ordinary citizen AND as a victim of the situation. It was agonizing for me to go through this all, just hearing Andrew's side of the conversation as it got more heated and agitated. Of course, Andrew gets off the call and tells me he loves those types of conversations (revealing his true legal debater inner self), since he was able to bring the woman to a dumbfounded silence as she struggled to think of an answer to his logical questions. As I've experienced his frustrating logical arguments myself, I almost felt bad for the woman.

As it stands right now, it looks like Andrew was relatively lucky that this appears to be a situation where the credit card company was negligent, as in, one of their employees was trying to find someone to pay the bill and did some random search where they tied Andrew's name and number to the account. After getting off the phone with the credit card company and the police, Andrew checked his credit report and found nothing out of the ordinary on it, thank God!

So as Andrew did and what I did this morning, I urge everyone to visit annualcreditreport.com to obtain a free credit report from your choice of the three main consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This site is sponsored by the government and you are entitled to a free report every 12 months from each of the companies, which means you can space them out and essentially have three credit checks each year. Keep in mind, this doesn't reveal your credit score (that costs extra money), but it does allow you to monitor what cards are attributed to your name and social security number as well as any suspicious activity. Also, don't get tricked by all the fake websites that are out there that promise you free credit reports, annualcreditreport.com is the official site sanctioned by Federal Trade Commission.