Stolen Identity

renegadefm

To me its too much of a coincidence that on the 11th my account was logged into. Then the 12th the first case of credit was granted. I was alerted to this by a fraud team which found it odd why an explosion of successful credit was being done in my name. But it wasent until I eventually logged onto Clearscore after following the advice of the fraud team that it I noticed a credit score search was done on the 11th. Then the 12th it all started. Surely this cant be coincidence.
I am assuming to log into someone elses Clearscore account is no more difficult that when people hack social media accounts, all they need is an email and password. Compared to needing a lot more to gain the credit. But of course once your in in somones Clearscore all the info they need is there. Even my earnings is there.

yksi

If that's what they did, this person got hold of your password. Twice. Or got into your email account and reset the passwords to get into these accounts. It isn't the CRAs you need to be blaming here, although yes, it's upsetting and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I hope you've changed the passwords to your email, paypal, internet banking, and everything else you can think of.

And how did he get the physical credit card into his hands? Those get mailed to your home, unless he's had it delivered elsewhere, which would give police a nice lead, as would the delivery addresses which Vodafone and Tesco Mobile have for him.

renegadefm

Burtons gave him an in store card, then the real one came to my house but he'd spent almost the full amount in store by then. That was just the start. One of the phones he got was 12 hundred pounds worth.

renegadefm

The phones were given to him straight away in store aswell. He obviously knew what hes doing. And probably already sold the phones. But they are blocked now so the 3rd party who bought them probably for Christmas will have a shock to discover they wont work but probably cant go back to the guy.

yksi

I do, however, think there is still some confusion on your part. People do not normally apply for credit from a credit reference account like ClearScore or Credit Karma. It would be a bizarre way for a fraudster to do it, too, leaving more of a trail - they'd be better off just going after the cards.

For those telling you that logging in doesn't make a search, here is a screenshot of CreditKarma showing that it does exactly that: https://gyazo.com/171b5c2647c1d28a52761d0389345747. To my knowledge none of the others show it like this (I feel it's a pointless piece of information and just confuses the issue). HOWEVER, if the search is in the other column, "Others' Searches", or it's an ID, credit, quotation, anti-money-laundering search, these do not necessarily originate from within the account, these are also generated when someone fills out an application for a credit card or phone contract somewhere else. That company then searches your credit account and it shows up in your account. This all happens without a creep having access to your credit account.

You should open your internet search history and triple-check that you didn't visit CreditKarma on the day that the "Consumer Credit File Request" is showing.

renegadefm

No trust me I didnt even hear of Credit Karma until after my Clearscore account was blocked. I only created that account today. It was Clearscore that told me somone logged into my Clearscore on the 11th but I can assure you this wasent me. Then everything else followed.

Nemodot

Sorry to hear your Christmas is been ruined by this.

Ficus on changing all passwords, including emails, make sure first you havent got a trojan horse on your computer (could be at work?) and check all your current cards and accounts.

Just get new credit blocked, deal with it and in the future be careful with passwords and your smartphone or computer.

Get a shredder and shred all correspondence as some ID theives use thrown out bank statements etc to get derails to steal.

Check your clearscore weekly for any unusual activity.

renegadefm

Hi Nemodot, I have done all the above. My Clearscore account has been blocked so even I cant access it. And I always shred any correspondence. I rarely purchase things online so I am baffled where they got my details, other than my theory of actually gaining access to my Clearscore account because it lists there that I logged onto it to do a credit search on the 11th but that definetly wasent me. Then on the 12th the criminal applied for credit and got it, then the spree of gaining more credit began. It all seems very calculated to me because by doing this the identity thief knew my credit rating and all my details to encourage his attempts to apply for credit. Well I cant prove it but its my theory because it seems too much of a coincidence for the credit search to have happened a day before the credit was applied for. A bit like feathering the nest first. Seems ironic for a identity thief to be able to gain access to the places that are for our protection, but even Clearscore didnt take any chances when they learned what happened to me and dissolved the account, so they must have believed my theory to be plausible. The thing is I'm not the only one to be victim of this thief you can be sure of that, they are clever in what they do, and have the nerve to carry it through, even though they are bound to be on cctv somewhere. Just in my instance hes been successful in gaining credit which is piling up into thousands. So hes moved onto someone else by now, and more besides, I just wonder when his luck will run out and be put behind bars.

TripleH

Renegadefm, have you moved recently (past couple of years?) Do you live or have you lived in a shared house? It is posdible how vigilant you are that someone has got hold of your info without you knowing.

Yellow_mango

My husband has also recently been a victim of identity fraud. The first thing they did apparently was to open a ClearScore account (he didn’t have one). ClearScore have confirmed that an account was opened on that date, and access has now been blocked. Not before they used that access to obtain information including previous addresses etc to apply for a large number of credit accounts (so far we have seen 8 credit application searches and 64 identity and / or quotation searches over a 10 day period). Fortunately most of these applications were rejected, and the rest we have managed to contact before any payment was taken so there was no actual financial loss (other than one payment to purchase a phone which has now been refunded).

I find it extremely concerning that fraudsters are able to access credit reports in this way and use them as a way to obtain personal information. I can only assume they managed to successfully guess the answers to the confirmation questions. We think they got hold of his wallet which had a debit card and a driving licence in it, giving access to bank account details, date of birth and current address.

We will no longer be carrying a driving license routinely.

I hope you get yours sorted quickly.