Identify theft

Lara

Not sure if this is the right place? Advice needed please.

My husband had an account opened with two catalogue's on 1st November. All his details are correct however he NEVER opened them. He had a statement through yesterday giving his account number etc. It concerned him enough to ring the company today and find out about it. They have stopped and closed the account but advised him to get a credit report copy. My question is who should we apply to for this and do we have to pay for it. I'm not sure why they advised this. Many thanks for any help.

sfax

Experian and Equifax £2 each

http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

http://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html

Also noddle.co.uk (CallCredit) for free but the first two are used the most

Lara

Many thanks. I see we can get an Experian report free if we take out a free 30 day trial. It seems to have more ticks than the £2 one?!

sfax

Lara wrote: »

Many thanks. I see we can get an Experian report free if we take out a free 30 day trial. It seems to have more ticks than the £2 one?!

Yes, go for it but don't forget to cancel before your free trial ends or you'lll automatically get billed £15 every month. You can also only cancel over the phone (I think)

Lara

I think OH has gone for the £2 on off payment. Thanks for your help

Maestro.

I certainly hope no one thiefs my identify.

Lara

Fortunately nothing taken from credit cards. Worrying though how they managed to get all the details .

James

Personal infomation possibly including fake ID or utility bills has been used by someone to open these accounts. This type of information and these types of documents are easily obtainable. You can negate the value of this type of information/documents to thiefs - see tip below.


Just two things to add to previous postings.

1. Get your Credit Report from ALL 3 Agencies. Include Call Credit. (Reason for doing this is that lenders use different Credit Reference Agencies).

2 Take pro-active steps to protect yourselves, secure your personal information and hold lenders/banks to account if something happens like your experience.


To do number two consider Free ID Protection www.freeidprotection.co.uk . Weigh up the pros & cons and if it's for you, go for it.

To my knowledge, in the 6 years of its existance, no one using the Free ID Protection system has ever suffered from this type of fraud. It has been 100% successful.

Good luck.

ALIBOBSY

Just out of interest was this with H & M?

Only wondering as the same happened to my OH last month with them. TBH they were very good and stopped the account straight away and removed all the credit file entries within 3 wks-although we had raised the issue with the credit ref agencies as well at the same time.

We were told they scammers open catalogue accounts using your name and address. Then attempt to change the address, before maxing out the account. We were told by H & M to stop this they now won't allow COA within 6 months of opening-without further proof and ID.

We picked it up quickly because we have a free Equifax service through one of our credit cards.

Watching for any other issues but so far nothing.

We were shocked as we are obsessive about shredding paperwork and massive amounts of online security-OH works in IT tech. But I guess names and addresses aren't that difficult to trace.

Ali x

Lara

Hi, not it wasn't H&M, it was ISME and Kay's .

eddddy

James wrote: »

To do number two consider Free ID Protection www.freeidprotection.co.uk . Weigh up the pros & cons and if it's for you, go for it.

To my knowledge, in the 6 years of its existance, no one using the Free ID Protection system has ever suffered from this type of fraud. It has been 100% successful.

Hi James

The info on this freeidprotection site does not seem too good - it could mislead people. It says:

If a lender gives out any type of credit in your name and a thumbprint was not on the application, you are not liable.

It would be more accurate to say:

If a lender gives out any type of credit to a fraudster using your name, you will not be liable (irrelevant of any thumbprints etc)

And Callcredit say:

If you add a Notice of Correction to your credit file any organisation accessing your credit file through Callcredit will have access to your Notice of Correction. Please bear in mind that if you add a Notice of Correction to your credit file, lenders searching our database for information we hold about you are obliged under the Guide to Credit Scoring to read your Notice of Correction. This may slow down their decision of whether to offer you the product/service you have applied for.

So it sounds like all automatic credit scoring will fail. Some people could see this as a massive inconvenience.

I can't find any examples of financial institutions or CRAs who think that the thumbprint solution is a good idea - it looks more like a piece of hype dreamed up by newspapers.

Equifax seem to be very lukewarm about it: http://www.equifax.com/help/q6/en_uk#d