Make a Plan and You Will Find...Life Happens, and Maybe Scams

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Today my working day began earlier than usual. I finished my quiet time and my German session with Drops and headed to the computer, ready to start writing. The plan was to get at least one of the many drafts in my Medium draft file ready to publish or submitted to a publication. But life doesn't always happen the way one plans it. I hadn't even checked a small portion of my emails before my husband poked his head in the door rather sheepishly. He said, "I think I made a mistake." he then explained he'd answered the phone and someone from an insurance company said there was a program that would help pay for a leg brace. (If you read one of my recent discussions, you know that Hubby hurt his leg about a week ago and I took him to urgent care. ) The phone rep he talked to asked for his social security number and he gave it to her. After he hung up he realized he shouldn't have done it and came to confess. So, for the next three or four hours I was online and talking to reps at credit reporting bureaus trying to protect against any damage this disclosure might have caused or will cause. This would not have been such a problem had I changed my Costco membership address and credit card address for the Costco credit card when I wanted to months ago. But I hadn't. I belong to a credit card monitoring service through our executive membership, but Hubby needs his own account. He never wanted to pay for it before. All the bank accounts are joint and are monitored through my membership. But not his social security number. He doesn't do email or computers. The email I have in my records which I've used for him in the past seems to be obsolete, but it was the only one I had in my contacts. I while searching for its password, I couldn't find it. But I didn't figure out it was obsolete until after I used it as his email address when filing the fraud report. As I was chasing the account information I discovered that when he got his phone our carrier helped him open a new account for it since he couldn't remember his email address. I had the information for that account, but I know he never checks it. I put my own email address, the one I put for all my accounts, as the contact number for the credit monitoring service. I'm the only one who checks, anyway. So now we filed a fraud report with one of the credit reporting bureaus which will pass it to the other two. With the wrong email contact address. I will still have to deal with that. But today I needed to get him enrolled in the credit monitoring service, Complete I.D. We get a huge discount on it through our Costco membership, but before I could sign him up I had to update our mailing and billing address for the Costco account. I had delayed it because the old address is still the physical address for the business the membership is for. We just don't live on the premises anymore and the mailbox is far from the house near the highway. Hubby picks it up often, but it's still not very secure. To change the address online requires knowing things from years back you may have forgotten -- not stuff that you might have accidently divulged on Facebook. It's not too bad if you've only lived in one place. But we have moved seven times since we got married and my husband has worked on contract in two other states where he lived for a few months. While on one of these jobs he also had to move to a new address when we had to move in with him after he had an unexpected surgery and could not live alone. I really don't remember any of those three out-of-town addresses. I do remember the street for the one in Massachusetts. One question gave me four different addresses and a none of these option. I had to guess which he'd been associated with. I couldn't recognize any of them. The other questions were just as complex, but a bit easier. Except the last. Most of the security question choices were really not applicable to my husband, since he wasn't born in this country. His siblings are all dead. He's long forgotten the names of his teachers in his war-torn country. Etc. What to do? I had to choose something. Picking a city for his nearest sibling was really the only option, except it wasn't really. Didn't think to put the location of the graveyard. However, I couldn't have put what state it was in since it isn't in the USA. But I did think of something. At first it wasn't a city, and I didn't know if there was a city by that name, so I found a synonym for the city. Wouldn't you know, they then asked what state it was in. I lucked out. There is a city with the name I chose and I was able to choose a state for it that I knew was correct. I hope I never have to explain it to anyone. After I got through verifying Hubby's identity I had to fill out the profile with all the cards and accounts to be monitored. When I finished I was ready for a break. Hubby is finally in bed and I hope I can get something posted to Medium before I go to sleep tonight. What is the hardest form you've ever had to fill out? Has any of your financial information ever been compromised? Did any credit monitoring service ever help you recover from a fraud attempt?