I did not apply for a new credit card but I got two credit cards in the mail from my bank at the same time where you are supposed to call and activate them.  Both have the same account number, one has my name on it and the other has the name of a woman in South Carolina according to the bank.  

Bank says someone filled out a complete credit card app with all my info and is joint on the credit card.  I've filled out a police report online.  Bank also said I should get a fraud alert going with one of the major credit report agencies.  I guess I'm lucky the cards got sent to my house for activation instead of South Carolina, maybe the thief made a mistake.

Oddly enough, I was having a beer with one of my friends who uses a different bank and he got the same thing at the same time I did, two cards, same account number, one in his name and the other with the name of a woman.  The last name of the woman is the same as that on the card that I received but a different first name. Coincidence?

Anyone go through this and is there anything else I should do?  Is Lifelock that I see advertised so much worth it or is that inviting even more trouble?  When I go to Experian to file a fraud alert, they need your SS# and now I'm not comfortable with providing that online.

How does one steal your identity theft?

Bro, your info has been out there in the hands of millions of employees, and 100 million hackers...

Its only a matter of WHEN someone chooses YOUR info.

Nothing is secure anymore.

Was there about 2 yrs ago then again 1 year ago...

multiple bank accounts and credit cards activated. I was able to pull 13k in cash out that did  not belong to me. I messed up and invited the man into my life. Now, the money sits in his "safekeeping".

Assume everything is jeopardized and start there.

A call to the man got me a police report.

Then I had to call all 3 credit agencies. (I lie... I went online, not called)

Then I reached out to Chexsystems and the other check verification company.

Made Sure Social Security Administration had correct info and wasnt tampered with.

I was able to initiate all things online probably within 30 minutes.

Once I had the police report the Credit agencies placed a security hold with a call number to me if Any thing happens.

Within 3 months and maybe 4hrs time  everything is back to normal. I have yet to receive a call from  a credit agency or bank looking to open an account. So not sure if it works.

i do check my credit report quarterly

Our main personal Account at Navy Federal was not effected.

BoA, Chase and Navy Federal were quick to react and provide lettters and proof of everything.

Wells Fargo where I "HAD" our business accounts were just non helpful and kept sending overdraft notices to me

USAA was an absolute failure to help.....

Good Luck!

whats the name of the woman in south carolina? GD wants to look her up on facebook

Get a hold of experian, equifax, and transunion right now and put a freeze on your credit. Go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
and get your credit reports from all three bureaus. Check to make sure there were no new accounts open, and most importantly, check the inquiries. Be prepared for a bunch of online payday loan places sending you collection notices...

A service like lifelock won't be much use if you get it now. Might be nice in the future for the credit monitoring.

At this point get the bogus cards and accounts shutdown. Submit a fraud report to any of the three credit reporting agencies.  Submit an identity theft affidavit to the IRS. If you want you can also dispute any credit inquiries on your credit report and possibly have them removed to keep your credit score from dropping.

Sign up for a credit monitoring service. They will alert you whenever anything new pops up on your report. Usually within 24 hours. This gives you the ability to start shutting shit down before people run up any debt in your name. Or you can just freeze your credit if you have no need for any new credit accounts any time soon.

Be sure to check your current accounts also.  

I had my SS# stolen a few months ago.   What they did, was randomly call places like Lowes, sears, HHgreg, etc, where I had credit accounts.  They used my ss# to access my account, and then told them "I lost my card and need a new one mailed." they then also told them that "my address has changed and I need it shipped to my new address".  

Luckily, I have the USAA credit monitoring,  and when the cards were reported as lost,  USAA notified me, and I was able to call the credit providers and let them know that they were fraudulant claims.  

So just looking for new accounts isn't enough.


You need to monitor your current accounts also.

That's strange.  I have a security freeze on my credit and it's never happened to me.

The bank said the name is probably or could be bogus but it was Karen L. Gibson.  My friend said the name on the card he got was Christine Gibson but I'll confirm and get the middle initial later today.

enjoy your false sense of security

Welcome to the party.

You will be surprised at how easy to anyone if these days.

All I've had in the last year was someone trying to buy a big TV from Walmart online with a credit card of mine and have it drop shipped to Arkansas or Kentucky or somewhere. Credit Card company flagged it and notified me, sent me a new card.

LifeLock has been good, on some legitimate credit transactions they have notified me within a couple of hours. Those "free" monitoring services I got from the government for the OPM and military data breaches took about three weeks to notify me about the same transactions. 

 

City on the credit app that was filled out is Chesnee, SC.  So now I have a name, city, state, street address and even a phone number for Karen L. Gibson.  I'll update the police report for now.

If you think you want to sign up for something like LifeLock, ensure that you do not pay a premium for that which you can do for yourself for free.

Maybe they will tell you that they can tell you when sex offenders move into your area. You can find out for free any day of the week just by checking yourself. Maybe they will tell you they can provide a service wherein you can have yourself removed from public searches, and then when it comes time to deliver, what they actually provide is a table of online links that you use to opt-out one by one.

It's my opinion that those LifeLock people make a lot of money doing absolutely nothing.

It's all on you, but a strategy that I like is to open a free CreditKarma account AND THEN freeze your credit reporting at the big three. If you try it the other way around, it may not work for you.

Some folks will bitch about CreditKarma. Maybe they will say something like CreditKarma artificially lowers one of your scores just so you will purchase a report from that particular service. Don't sweat that; just take what they give you for free.

Being a Texas resident, you will be paying for those freezes.

Freeze your account on all 3 like @DirtyTim said.  It should be free (some states have to pay, like mine ) but with your LE Report, you should be gtg.

Here's what you need brother.... check out all of my original post and the responses I posted.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1847535_-ARCHIVED-THREAD----Freeze-your-credit-people-.html&page=1

In addition, petition the IRS for an identity theft pin on your account.  Call 1-800-908-4490.  You can't e file without it.

File form 14039 with the IRS and the State where you reside letting them know you were a victim of identity theft.

Let your bank know that you were a victim along with all investment accounts/ira's/401-k's.

You have a lot of work to do.  Get hussling.

So far my security plan seems to be working , I'm so broke and in debt, and my credit so crappy, anyone who steals my identity  will be calling within hours offering me $100 to take it back!

I'm thinking that's more than just a coincidence.  Perhaps some place where you both shop at or use your cards at was compromised.  Your friend may want to file a police report as well...  

Also, you may want to ask about having your credit frozen.  I don't know if it has any detrimental side effects to your score, but IIRC it prevents new credit lines from being opened until you remove it.

I don't use a credit card all that much so I'm not sure how this happened.  My buddy does however and we do go to the same grocery store but that's about it.

Police report is now updated and credit is frozen at all 3 agencies.  My credit score is well over 800 and I have no big purchases coming for a few years so I'm OK if it dips down a bit.  By the way, the TransUnion people are just impossible to deal with.  Thanks to all responders, except for aemun of course.

Even though you froze your credit, you still need to stay on top of your shit.  

When some people stole my identity, they first got a credit card in my name.  No big deal as my credit monitoring caught it and I had it shut down before they got the card.  Freeze would have stopped that, but not a huge deal.  This was fixed in one phone call.

Next, they showed up at an AT&T store about 20 miles from my house.  They had an ID with my info but their picture on it.  They were able to buy 5 or 6 new iPhones (paying for them later.. on their first bill I guess) and open a new AT&T wireless account in my name.  AT&T didn't run a credit check on them since I already had an account with them for the last 8 years and it was in perfect standing.  So AT&T just opened an account and handed them some phones because they figured I was good for it (and thought the thieves were me).  Credit freeze wouldn't have stopped any of that since my credit was never ran.  I had no idea about this new account until I started getting random AT&T shit in the mail for phone insurance I never asked for but apparently was signed up for.  This was a much bigger pain in the ass to sort out, mainly because I drew the short straw and got an idiot from AT&T fraud on the phone when I first called.

Moral of the story... freezing your credit is good... but there is more people can do with your identity than just get some credit cards.  The freeze won't protect you from all the shit that can happen.  Just something to keep in mind.

When my identity was stolen.....They sent it back with condolences

I thought my low FICO score would keep someone from buying anything.  6 lines with TMobile, cable account, landline and accounts with VZW, Boost and Sprint (2 of them) later, I was shown I was wrong.

The way I was alerted was a follow up call from a CSR asking how I liked my 6 new lines of service

I work in consumer finance and I see fraud fairly frequently.

With surprisingly little information, a motivated and sophisticated criminal can fairly easily steal your identity.

At my branch alone we have caught 14 fraudulent applications for loans this year. None of those were approved or funded. Most of those were caught by employees.

Two were close to signing when the real account owner was alerted by Life-lock that an application had been started in their name. Based on my clientele, I'd say those are probably the only two that had Life-lock.

It wasn't from your card. It was a data breech or most likely mail theft. Snagged your account info from a bank statement. Search found your DOB and SSN. Time to apply.

Check your cell and utility providers. The person can call and add stuff very easily. It is a joke. Pull your credit reports and keep checking them. Lifelock does nothing more than you can do on your own. Monitoring credit is easy.

Keep in mind some places will still give out credit. Montgomery Ward and Fingerhut are the worst. Victoria Secret is an easy #3.

Lifelock is a rip. They don't do anything you can't do yourself.

If your ID gets stolen, lifelock will not deal with the companies where accounts in your name were opened and used. They leave that up to you. All lifelock will do is alert the credit agencies. You can do that yourself.

There is a company out there, Zander identity theft protection, that will do all the extra legwork for you.

Damn it. I just got another notification that a credit card app was filled out in my name with yet another bank and I don't even have an account there.  The police now say to call the Social Security Administration and report it there as well so that is my list of things to do tomorrow.  

So in summary if this happens to you:

Set up email notifications when even a penny is charged on any of your working credit cards
Get a credit report and examine all inquiries
Freeze your credit with all 3 agencies & keep PIN #s in a very safe place
File a police report
Contact the SS admin
Call your bank
Call all investment firms you do business with

I forgot about the IRS thing that IS Zebra mentioned - will have to do that as well.