Possible Identity Theft please help

amjad171

Hello All,

I am a newbie to this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I applied for a Natwest Credit card online around December and in mid January I got a letter from Natwest saying contact them because there had been suspicious transactions on the account, at this time I had not even received the card yet so I guess it was probably stolen in the post, I contacted Natwest and they cancelled the card and sent me a new one and all seemed fine. Well this Saturday just gone I received a phone bill from Orange who I do not even have a contract with for £393.96, I rang their customer services and when the lady checked on screen she said the D.O.B and Employment I gave did not match the ones she had. The nice lady did inform me that I will not receive any more correspondance from orange but I had to write in to their fraud team which I will be doing today. I have registered with Experian and waiting for the email to check what else has been applied for on my name.

Can anyone help me and let me know if I should contact the police or who ever else, I have this scary feeling that someone is out there applying for credit cards and mortgages in my name. Please help.

Careful_ly

I would suggest you need to speak to Nat West fraud department as probably whoever has the credit card and knows your address is using them as ID to obtain other credit.. I think they will probably then protect your ID by having a CIFAS warning against your name and address (Cifas.org.uk), this will then make it difficult to obtain instant credit, both for you and the person who has the card.
The question remains how they have used the card without it being activated on arrival?

grumbler

...........

amjad171

Thanks for that, I will contact Natwest today. I know that they tried using the credit card at a cash machine without any luck because they did not have the pin number and tried guessing, not sure about the types of transactions they made though. I am still waiting for my credit report from experian and fingers crossed hopefully all is OK.

loubie_lou

No wonder Royal Mail has been finded nearly £12 Million if things like if post is being stolen or intercepted somehow.

Amjad hope all works out for you, I'm terrified of this happening to me too!

amjad171

thanks loubie_lou

Just waiting for the credit report now to see if there is anything else on there. fingers crossed.

Experian_company_representative

amjad171 - once you get your Experian report, if there are fraudulent entries on there you should contact our Consumer Help Service as it has a special team set up to help victims of identity fraud. They will also tell you what else you need to do to put things straight and will send you a copy of our free identity fraud guide (details below). Hope you manage to sort things out without too much inconvenience.

Dave_the_Ginger_Cat

Yep - get yourself a protective registration - no need to wait for the Experian report. CIFAS. There are requirements to report what you know already to the police, but you can always append to a report if you find out anything more.

As not all lenders subscribe to Experian, you may not see the extent of the damage on this, and you may get other debts surfacing in the future.

Don't get too stressed by it all, and don't take it personally - all the Fraud departments are there to support you.

Also folks, don't be terrified by this, just take sensible precautions with your own data. Buy and use shredders, don't let people overhear your passwords and personal data, particularly in open plan offices.

Hope it's resolved soon

DTGC

Experian_company_representative

Not all lenders subscribe to CIFAS either so you are well advised to take on board the additional advice Experian provides, which will probably include contacting the other two CRAs as well.

amjad171

JamesJones wrote:

amjad171 - once you get your Experian report, if there are fraudulent entries on there you should contact our Consumer Help Service as it has a special team set up to help victims of identity fraud. They will also tell you what else you need to do to put things straight and will send you a copy of our free identity fraud guide (details below). Hope you manage to sort things out without too much inconvenience.

Thanks for the help really appreciate it, the report will take atleast 7 working days so expect to see that next week.

amjad171

Dave_the_Ginger_Cat wrote:

Yep - get yourself a protective registration - no need to wait for the Experian report. CIFAS. There are requirements to report what you know already to the police, but you can always append to a report if you find out anything more.

As not all lenders subscribe to Experian, you may not see the extent of the damage on this, and you may get other debts surfacing in the future.

Don't get too stressed by it all, and don't take it personally - all the Fraud departments are there to support you.

Also folks, don't be terrified by this, just take sensible precautions with your own data. Buy and use shredders, don't let people overhear your passwords and personal data, particularly in open plan offices.

Hope it's resolved soon

DTGC

Thanks mate, will look into this once I have the report