I have no way to know if I am suffering directly as a result of a high-profile breach, but in the last roughly 92 days, I have been hit with dozens of uses of my private information in subprime non-traditional financial transactions that are fraudulent.
Specifically, there have been nationwide close to 40 payday loans/online loans/etc taken out in my name. My main credit reports are frozen, but apparently the dozen or so subprime credit reports all have to be frozen individually, and they are all super sketchy companies.
On top of that, despite the credit freeze, there have been numerous bank accounts opened, a dozen or so attempts to file tax refunds, and now mostly, attempts to change my direct deposit and do wage garnishments from various alleged creditors I've never dealt with.
One fraudster obtained a title loan against my (paid off) car with a forged request for title.
I have lawyer working close to full-time dealing with fallout, and have made a claim against my homeowners policy which had some limited (but still helpful) protection against identity theft impacts. They are investigating suborgation and it's not unlikely that if I am proven to have been affected by a certain high profile breach that I may be a litigant in the very near future.
One thing I am being advised to do is to change my social security number immediately, to basically stop the clock on my old one. I would update as many of my current accounts as possible to the new one, it would have credit freezes placed on it from the get go, and it would begin to separate my identity from my original now compromised identity.
One concern I have is, that even with these problems, I have a nearly perfect credit score - in the ~830 range on the 850 point scale. A bunch of this is from current accounts and that would transition with me, but according to my research and my lawyer, closed accounts and history - which is substantial and in my case goes back over 20 years on many tradelines, would probably be lost because those are no longer reporting and will probably not be transferred over to my new SSN.
I don't always use credit, but when I do, I'm used to being given the absolute best deals - low or no interest, best terms, etc. I leased a car last year and they practically gave me money with the lease signing. My lawyer says that eventually my score will bounce back, and he's working on whether a reduced credit score is a damage that could be used in litigation against the source of the breach, but for the next fewer years, I may suffer from a score 100+ points lower than I have earned.
Does anyone have any first hand experience on the impacts of a changed social security number on their main line (Experian, Transunion, Equifax) credit reporting? Thanks in advance!
Submitted September 20, 2017 at 11:01PM by dan_underscore http://ift.tt/2fcV6hl
