I have fallen victim to Identity Theft. Even my FTE account has been hacked so I had to create a new one and start over.

And, I have one of those Identify Theft Accounts I pay for monthly. Which, did absolutely no good.

If you don’t follow your credit reports, credit card statements, bank balances; you should.

It took only about 30 hours for some hacking group to run up just shy of $90,000.00 on all my accounts.

Luckily, for the most part, everything has been resolved after five days of telephone and mail activity. Except that all my assets and credit is frozen for a few months.

How did this happen. I am VERY CAUTIOUS. It turns out, all one needs is your email address and some software.

Just a word to the wise:

1. Run Antivirus Software and Anti-Malware Software regularly.
2. Change e-mail passwords every month or two.

I have to "earn point" prior to being able to respond to some posts so it may take some time to get my 10 years of membership here back to help where I can.

Tom

 

My medical insurance company was hacked, so they are covering the cost of identity protection for 2 years. It bothers me that these "protection" companies collect their money, then evaporate when it rains. I always wondered how they would perform.

I hope this gets cleared up quickly.

 

What monthly monitoring company and did they do anything to help with the clean up?

 

That sucks man. My credit card was hacked before and being used in pakastan!
Unfortunately Ive heard that the ID protection stuff was a waste of money. Good luck

 

Actually, we had two. One I have, the other my wife had through her employer prior to her becoming disabled.

** Both are advertised well on Television. I'll leave it at that. **

Here is how it works, these companies monitor your credit. But, they don't do it every minute of every day as you would think. They get alerts from the credit bureaus when someone tries to establish credit and then they contact you. Quarterly, you get a copy of your credit report for your review. We had all this for more than 10 years.

I found out because I link all my accounts through a banking program which does a one click update and down loads activity. You can do the same thing by checking all your credit card sites everyday which is cumbersome. That's the FIRST thing I do when I get up for coffee in the morning, every morning.

When I down loaded Monday I noticed charges to several credit cards as well as my debit card and immediately picked the phone up and called the bank. Ironically, while on the phone with the bank, one of the credit card companies had contacted me about some charges.

I called the credit monitoring company and their response was "Oh, we're sorry to hear that". They then began instructing me to contact this agency and that agency as they can't do it for me. I understand that. Although you think there would be more.

So, when I called the credit card company whom called while I was on line with the bank, they immediately transferred me to a third party of theirs with a reference#.

I called, it was all automated, and when I finished putting in the information it asked for (name, birthdate, a bunch of yes or no questions to where I had lived, etc, everything I have ever touched with credit was frozen and void to include all credit bureaus, credit lines, everything. I mean all cards, account numbers, everything. Without cash you're dead in the water at this point.

I had to go to the bank and they reopened my account with two forms of ID and a reference number I was given. All my credit card companies issued and overnighted new cards with identify chips and a process to activate them.

THE ONLY REASON THIS WENT "SMOOTHLY FOR ME" WAS BECAUSE I CAUGHT IT RIGHT AWAY. Days are too many. Otherwise the money would have been paid out by the credit card companies until the limits were met and this would have taken months, maybe years to resolve. Everything, including my Bank withdrawals were listed as "pending" which would have been approved 12-24 hours later.

My biggest pain in the *** so far is MICROSOFT. I still have not been able to speak with anyone who can help. All because I used their @outlook.com email address and their easy reset procedure for passwords. And, I had a two step verification process! Apparently, hackers can reroute text messages to a temporary cell phone until you power yours down and power it back on with your service provider and they get your reset security code. Then, they're off to get TurboTax documents and much more. Once they get your SSN from somewhere, it's over, they've got you!

To date, everything has been credited to my accounts including all the money from my banking, IRA's, PayPal, and savings.

I did receive an alert from the monitoring service on Thursday. This all happened between Sunday at noon to Monday morning.

Ironically, the wife and I had gone to counseling years ago (before the internet). One of the complaints she had about me was that I called all my banks and credit card companies and used a touch tone phone to get balances every couple days which drove her nuts.

- How you like me now I asked her when all this went down.

Tom

 

I had the same with Pakastan and china. Ran up nearly 8k dollars and I didn't even have that much in my account.

Good luck and hope you get it cleared up soon. Man what a pain!

 

Sorry to hear of it Tom hope you get it all behind you quickly. Thanks for sharing. ID theft is scary to me. I am what I consider to be a typical consumer. I shop on line plenty and not just at one store. I can't understand why the burden of it all should be ours when we have done nothing wrong. I would say that due diligence was not performed on the part of the creditor. The CC I use the most contacts me when I travel out of state and tells me about the change in my patterns.

 

They got me a couple months ago as well. Filed fraudulent income tax and student loan documents in my name. I make too much to qualify for a student loan anyway but I guess they did not realize that. I had to freeze my credit as well getting the free id theft service b/c my health insurance was hacked.

 

I wish you wouldn't. I'm really, really slow, and I don't watch much TV. Lifelock is the only company name that comes to mind. I remember a radio spot for another one that supposedly jumped in to help you if something did happen, but don't recall the name.

On another note, what is the advantage of hijacking your online forum log ins or your email? Is it just to use for spamming?

 

You can't reset any of your passwords. When I attempted to log in here it said I had the incorrect password. So, apparently it was changed. And, the only way to reset it is to have a link sent to your e-mail. So, when you re-set it sends a link to the person who has redirected your email. Bummer! You have to pretty much begin from scratch.

I hadn't been on Facebook for over a year. Now all I get is text messages asking me questions. New Phone Number next week to resolve that I guess. I'm getting about 30 a day.

 

In my mind (no proof), it was either BCBS or Microsoft. Both had breaches by the Chinese in January.