A family member was (and continues to be) the victim of identity theft. I spent about 36 hours assisting — and that was just my contribution. We had daily calls with the bank, credit bureaus, and credit monitoring agencies. We went in-person, multiple times, to speak with bank officers, police officers, and the FBI.

With each new email and phone notification that the thief was at-it again, we had to deal with the anxiety and trauma of our life being invaded.

Sounds unpleasant? It gets worse. The thief re-routed cell and house phone calls. Even locking us out of online accounts, canceling identity theft protection subscriptions, and of course changing security questions and passwords.

Protecting Yourself. Why should you care?

Nearly 1 out of 10 people in the US are victims and this number is rising. It’s a tremendous time suck that doesn’t easily disappear. You don’t want this happen to you — the harder you make it on them, the more likely thieves will move to their next prey. Here are some tips.

If it hasn’t happened to you, get into prevention mode NOW.

  1. Change your security questions to things that people wouldn’t know about you, like “What’s your favorite elementary school teacher?”. Don’t use any of the factual questions like “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” and “Which street address did you previously live at?”. A person who steals your identify will know this information (typically leaked through paperwork or phishing).
  2. Use unique passwords for your different online accounts. You can use a solid encrypted (and free) service like Lastpass or 1password to help you remember. Your passwords should be easily guessable — no names, addresses, and birth years. Instead, go for a short unique slogan or term that you would remember, like “Mydogis#1booyah”.
  3. Use 2 Factor Authentication everywhere you can (surprisingly, most banks don’t truly support it, but at least do it on your email). This stops a lot of potential fraud right away.
  4. If you don’t need it, disable online and phone banking. This is the #1 entry point for thieves. If you don’t have an online account, thieves can easily create one which you wouldn’t have access to. The only way to prevent this is to disable the feature. If you have an online account and use it, then make sure you’re monitoring your account frequently and have a strong password. Same with phone banking, if you never use that feature, then make sure it’s disabled so no one can impersonate you.
  5. Review your credit report, look for anything fishy.
  6. If someone calls you asking for information, don’t give anything — tell them you’ll call them back at the number you have on record (banks/etc). How do you know who they claim to say they are?
  7. Get a subscription to passive identity theft monitoring, Costco has a great deal for members.

If It Already Happened

First, SECURE EVERYTHING (see above), next get identity theft monitoring — they’ve got services to help you through issues and are a great resource.

  • Follow https://identitytheft.gov/ which also has the benefit of informing the FTC.
  • File a police report in your city (helps waive a bunch of fees for various services).
  • Register your SSN at http://ssa.gov so no one can do it in your place
  • Put a credit freeze on all three Credit Bureaus. You’ll have to manage the pins and temporarily disable the freeze if you want to get a credit card or loan, but this is a great way to prevent financial misuse.
  • Call every bank, credit card and insurance company and tell them you have had identity theft or are at risk of it. Ask to add 2FA, verbal passwords, high-risk alerts on all of your accounts. For verbal passwords, use a random phrase or a foreign word, not your mother’s maiden name.
  • Inform the IRS and your state taxation authority. Often identity thieves try to file fake tax returns to claim refunds on your account. The IRS form is here. If you live in California, the Franchise Tax Form is here.

Next, Figure out what they are after. Is it financial (64% of cases) or something else? My family member dealt with financial theft and this particular thief was so aggressive they rerouted mobile & landline phones, changed security questions, and locked us out of online banking — making us helpless.

We needed to take a step back and figure out (a) what are they after and (b) what information do they have and how did they get it. They were stealing money from checking accounts, applying for credit, and seemed to have social + dob + address + phone + answers to all security/credit bureau questions.

Our thief still hasn’t conceded, and the most surprising thing of it all is that the banks and police won’t really do anything (you need to suffer actual losses first — we’ve recovered everything). So, for extreme cases, put a permanent freeze on your credit, freeze your credit cards, change your social security number, and change your passwords daily using password tools.

Hopefully, they’ll move on to their next victim — perhaps someday they’ll get caught, but experiencing the situation first hand, I can tell you they probably won’t.