On Identity Theft

Somewhere around 1983 I was a victim of identity theft. I left my purse unattended and my wallet was stolen. The thief knew not to charge more than $50 on my credit card at a time so no one would call to verify the transaction. As I recall, my credit card bill was 8 pages long by the time I got it. They had opened a charge account at Neiman Marcus, that one took a while to take care of. I even received letters about returns "I" had made to stores I had never been to. It took years to clean things up. You attempt to be careful after that. You watch and read all the information you get about identity theft because it has become such a big thing. My social security card is locked away. I do alot of things electronically. I monitor my credit card bills and bank accounts. I shred things with personal info. Can you ever do enough? A few years ago I received a letter from an old health insurance carrier. Someone in their office may have sold my information to a third party, they just wanted to let me know to watch my credit. Last week I received a letter from my mortgage company. An employee (now former) may have sold unauthorized personal information about me to a third party. This information includes my name address, social security number and other information they had on file, like were I work, my bank account, etc. Great! Here we go again. At least they offered to pay for a credit monitoring service although that alone is minimal in all the stress this could involve.