Think Identity theft only happens to other people? Think again.
About 6 years ago, my mom died and left a small amount
of money. It was not a lot, enough to buy one alpaca, but it was "important"
money to me. An account was opened by the trust company, and I'd be
able to write checks like any bank account. Before I got the checks,
I got a statement showing a bunch of checks were cashed. Yep, someone
intercepted my checks in the mail.
It took quite a while, but I ended up getting all but about $800 back.
I just gave up on the last part, it was more than I could take. I just
chalked it up to "spit happens."
Fast forward to last year:
Unbeknownst to us, on Saturday night, someone broke into our (locking)
mailbox. They found enough info to wipe us out. On Monday morning at
9:00 Florida time, someone walked into a bank in Florida, pretty much
cleaned out our personal account, and hit the business account leaving
about half of it..
Tuesday morning at about 7:00, Pati discovered it when she was doing
online banking. We immediately called the fraud division of our bank,
and put a lock on accounts.
At 9:00 sharp, we were the first people through the doors of our bank.
He saw that the business had been hit, and then went to our personal
account, it had about $30 left. While in there, he closed the personal,
and opened a new one.
When he went back to the business account, it had been hit again, despite
the fraud lock. While we sat in the bank, someone in Florida got all
but about $100 out of it. We were broke.
It took about 3 months, but it did all get sorted out.
Of course, we had to eat, buy gas, make mortgage payments, and the only
way to do that was with credit cards. We had some hefty finance charges.
In the meantime, AT&T collections was after us for a $600 phone
bill on our service in the city of Los Angeles. Nope, it wasn't us,
but there was a lot of paperwork.
We also didn't sleep well at night, to say the least.
Recently, I started hearing commercials for a company
called Lifelock.
They have a Million Dollar guarantee that you will not experience Identity
theft. The owner even gives out his social security number on the radio.
They put fraud alerts on everything, get your name off of the pre-approved
credit card lists, and off of junk mail lists. They continue to do that
every 90 days. Every 3 months, you get your credit reports from all
four credit reporting companies.
I requested information from them electronically looked at it, and signed up immediately. Just afterwards, I got a call from the guy in charge of sales. I told him I was convinced and had already signed up. He started asking about alpacas, what they were, how much they sold for, all of the usual questions. He was amazed at how popular they had become, and how many breeders there were. By the time we were all done, there was a 10% discount for their services for alpaca breeders and friends!
It's normally $10/month, or $110/year (I signed up for
a year) Of course, Pati signed up also. You can go to lifelock.com and
enter the promo code alpacas, and it's $99/year or $9/month. Or, you
can just click the Lifelock
link, it's built in.
If you'd rather do it by phone, call 877-543-3562 and use the promo
code alpacas.
Update: On a transport trip in December 2007, I got to
see Lifelock in action. I was stopping at least twice a day for fuel,
and that set off a fraud trigger. I put my ATM card into the pump, and
it was declined. Fearful, I called the bank. Yep, my money was still
safe, I verified who I was and that I was on a trip, and the card immediately
worked again.
It was a five minute inconvenience, one I was more than happy to deal
with, as I knew someone was looking out for me.
