Woman Denied Loan Resulting from 1982 Identity Theft
In what appears to be the earliest
documented incident of identity
theft, a Illinois woman was denied
a new car loan because someone
24 years ago stole her identity to
obtain:
- A Mortgage
- Credit cards
- Utilities (e.g. gas,electric, etc.) started
Unfortunately for this woman, this identity theft and credit
fraud committed against her in 1982 proves that you can never
be too early to check out private and public records in your name.
So, our tip for today is to be diligent in verifying your name
is clear of any past identity theft. Get a copy of your free
credit report and also make sure to check out your public
information profile as well for the identity theft
items no credit report was ever designed to catch.
posted by agent99 @ 12:01 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
What?
24 years ago an identity thief stole this poor woman's credit.
I guess your article shows us that identity thieves aren't computer hackers after all.
But, how could this woman's identity theft gone on for soooo long without her noticing it?
Anonymous asked: "But, how could this woman's identity theft go one for so long without her noticing it?".
Well, it's very easy for certain types of identity theft to remain undetected for an extended period of time, although 24 years has to be a record.
Here's how:
If you do not visually inspect your credit report at least every six months for any suddenly "new" opened credit accounts -or- old accounts with a collections status.
Secondly, if you do not scrutinize your other major profiles which are non-credit based, an incident of identity theft can actully lurk there undetected for much longer.
The danger of the non-credit related identity theft is while not as widely known, the damage to your financial status can be equally if not more severe.
For example, one of our senior editors while doing a scan of his public records profile learned their was a convicted felon (assault, robbery) who shared his name in another state all the way across the country.
Except for a different middle initial, their names could easily get confused - thus rendering our senior editor to be a convicted felon and ineligible to vote or even worst subject to being arrested the next time the actual criminal has outstanding warrants for unpaid speeding tickets.
Besides your public information profile, there's also your medical information file as well as fraudulent check cashing databases which can potentially hold negative information on your name (right or wrong) for years if you do not verify or dispute it.
Collectively, there's over 400 different repositories with any one those files simply having incorrect or quite possibly identity theft signs against your name. Once that information gets into anyone of those 400 data repositories due to common data sharing practices, it doesn't take long before an incident of identity theft could spread like a virus to the other repositories.
But, here's the catch: most of those repositories if not all historically do NOT have any obligation to contact you should they discover possible signs of identity theft.
You, the ultimate owner of your data, must contact those data repositories to get a copy of their report on your and correct it if possible for identity theft.
With over 400 contact points required, it's obviously not possible for the average consumer to do that even in a year's time.
So, use some of our recommended services which act as aggregators of this vast amount of information.
It will minimally save your countless hours and substantial expense of trying to contact all 400.
Also, we encourage you to search through our site for some of the "favorite articles" for "free" tips on this subject.
Wow, 400 different repositories!
I had no idea it was that many.
I though there were only the 3 credit agencies (Experian, Equifax, & TU).
There's no way I could even begin to check any a fraction of those 400.
Thank you so much, Agent99 for providing your sources and tips.
They will save me a lot of time for me to insure I get protection from identity theft and credit fraud.
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