Identity Theft...Yes, It Could Happen To You
By cblackink
@cblackink (969)
United States
January 24, 2007 8:41pm CST
This is very weird. I guess most of you have heard now and then in the news about some laptop computers being stolen from companies that have personal information stored on them about individuals. Well, apparently it has happened to me. I worked for the American Express company for a number of years. Today, I received a letter in the mail from them advising me that a company in New York, a consulting agency, that I guess was handling outsourced human resources info for them, had five laptops stolen and they believe that my name, social security number and benefits info was on one of them. Thankfully, they advised that my bank account info for direct deposit was NOT on one of the stolen computers. To compensate for this, the agency has to provide me free credit monitoring service for an entire year, which costs them $130.00 per person.
This is too weird. I guess it could happen to anyone.
1 response
@Kaldonya (277)
• United States
25 Jan 07
Yep, it can very easily happen to anyone. That's great that they "compensated" you in that way. You can't beat free credit monitoring service. You know that you could also put a note on your credit report through the agencies at anytime (such as: id theft victim or potential id stolen - must verify by phone all new inquires or accounts) or different things like that. FYI.
1 person likes this
@cblackink (969)
• United States
25 Jan 07
Thanks for the advice. They did also tell me that I could contact the three credit reporting agencies and put a fraud alert on all my credit reports. Considering how poor my credit is, I don't know how far a crook would even get using my info!
