IDENTITY THEFT~ WHAT would you do, If SOMEONE stole Your IDENTITY??

I have "sortof" had my identity stolen-- and it happened while I was living in Texas. However, it happened because the secure ordering system on a website where I had ordered some camera gear was hacked, and the thieves made off with all the information people had uded to place orders for a while. In my case, they just drained by checking account with my debit card, and emptied my PayPal account-- both of which were covered by Wells Fargo (as my bank and as PayPal's "correspondent bank") so there was no loss. However, there were plenty of hassles because I started bouncing checks I'd written, because my account suddenly was empty. It's scary that people can access social security number like that, through county records.

ithappened to me,,,i never been in Kentuky and i owe the power bill overthere,,,and i had never been in Chicago and i owe them like $900 in cellphone bill there too,,,how the hekk this happened?? well,,,,someone stole my identity and use it for those things,,,,i really dont know what to do,but i wont spend a single cent on trying to resolve this situation,,,,the guilty one should pay for it...dont you think??

We just upgraded our cell phones the other day and they MADE us put my partner's social security number. I was super uncomfortable with this because it was a Cingular dealer through WalMart. The employees are WalMart employees and not Cingular's. So how do we know what they are doing with the paper that has his SSN on it? But my partner belongs to some membership that monitors his credit and has notifiers of certain activities. That is what society has been reduced to...paying for these memberships that will keep an eye on one's credit. *sigh*

So far I never heard yet like that case in our country.I know our government system here or even in private is very strict in that matter.however if somebody is going to do that in our country,then this something to give special attention immediately by our law enforcers.

I heard that on the radio yesterday. I used to work with government records and after the group I was with moved to the Health dept, they combined records & those records had SSN's on them, making them nolonger open records. Some of them were then further sealed for the protection of one of the parties - mostly in abuse cases so the husband could not find out the wife's new address. The strangest ones I remember are the ones when I would see an old adress I used to live at come thru!