Have you ever received a letter from a financial institution that notifies you that their systems were breached and that your personal information has been stolen? No, well I have, and not just once or twice but more like five times so far. I have had letters from Citibank, Wells Fargo, and just recently from a financial institution that I had never even heard of before. It seems that every six months of so a hacker is gaining information about me somewhere. The end result of course is that I have had my identity stolen at least four times. Thankfully, my credit file had not been strong enough for them to get any amount of credit beyond a $3,500 credit card. My credit file is now locked because my rating has gone up. But I worry about the use of my identity for the purposes of committing crimes. I really don’t want the cops showing up at my door thinking I failed to show up at some court date to be arraigned, when it was someone that presented my identity when they got caught, then bailed out and left me to deal with it.
The last time my identity was stolen the thief opened a Citibank Credit card in my name, probably only got a $500 limit since it was only two years after I had filed bankruptcy. But they used the card regularly, paid the bill timely every month, and after 3 years of having it and getting the credit limit increased up to $3,500 they maxed out the card, then stopped paying on it. Hmmm that was a long game for sure. It was not hard to prove that the thief was not me, since I lived about 400 miles away from the address they were sending statements to that were getting paid and I had all kinds of proof that I actually lived where I was. And although their fraud department said okay after I proved that it was not me that had racked up the charges, they sold the account to a collection agency instead of writing it off as they had promised they would do. So then I had to deal with that, and even though it has been like 9 years since I had my conversation with Citibank fraud department, I still get a collection notice about once every 6 months from the collection agency. I never respond as they no longer have legal standing to do anything. The statute of limitation had expired years ago, and I know for a fact that they do not have my signature on any contracts… LOL…
But today in reading the diary about Biden using a pseudonym I started to think about how I use them and thought I might share a piece of information with you. If you have received a letter from any financial institution that says your information has been stolen, they you should also consider that your answers to your security questions have been stolen as well. That is why my answers to those questions may seem a bit odd, but they are what gives me piece of mind when it comes to having my information stolen. I never give anyone the real answers to any questions they ask. For instance when they ask for my mother’s maiden name, I might put down something like “Happy Tree Crying”. I always use three words, always with the first letter capitalized and always three words that would never be used together. Of course I have to write the questions and answers down, and I keep them in a password protected file on a password protected drive on my computer. But it is worth it, because if someone accesses my information on some financial web site then try to use that information to access my financial information on some other website they are going to have a really difficult time. Mostly because I never use the same answer for the same question twice. On another website that asks for my mother’s maiden name I may put Purple Creek Flying.
I started doing this about 10 years ago after a friend of ours at the very last minute was able to prevent identity thieves from stealing $35,000 from his bank account. They had accessed his Facebook and other social media accounts and scrapped enough information to get the bank to believe they were him. But at the last minute the bank manager asked someone to call him to make sure that he returned some signed document so that they could update his file. That is when the transaction was discovered to be a fraudulent one and was stopped. That was an eye opener, and a big glowing warning. Social Media can be used against you. So be careful what you choose to share online.