This week was not difficult enough with both kids at home with the flu … no, today this guy calls and explains he’s trying to collect on a $250 loan someone using my name and SSN  took out last year somewhere in California. Great … another one! I explained politely that 1) I have never been to California and 2) I certainly have no California driver’s license and 3) most types of payday loans are illegal in North Carolina and unenforceable.

He pushed back and suggested I just pay the $250 to make sure it won’t ruin my credit. Yeah, right. The bank is too lazy to check whether the SSN matches the driver’s license, but NOW they are going to report the bad debt. I mean, they could Google my name and figure out I don’t live in California. But that’s their problem.

Still – I called Equifax and placed a 90-day fraud alert on my credit file. And I also placed a freeze on my file with all three credit bureaus. NC residents get that service free of charge, and all three have websites for placing a security freeze on your file:

Equifax Security Freeze / Trans Union Security Freeze / Experian Security Freeze

In addition, I am also now paying Equifax $7/month to email me whenever there is any change to my credit report.  I hate to do this, but who knows what that jerk who is using my SSN is up to next. The entire “credit bureau” system is a huge scam … they collect all kinds of information about you and then  you have to pay them to manage it. OK – so you get a free credit report every year (when did you last check your credit report?) but when someone is running around committing crimes using your SSN, that’s not enough. I wonder what’s next in this little saga?!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Just plain nuts, Our gang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.