Identity Theft Hurts

I recently read an article written by Vicky Lu for the University Daily Kansan.  Her article is about Melanie Krumsick’s mail, or lack thereof for roughly three weeks.  Seems that Melanie is a responsible lady who anticipates the arrival of her monthly credit card billing statement from her bank.

One week, two weeks, then three finally pass before Melanie calls her bank to inquire about her monthly billing statement.  Let’s see what happened when Melanie calls her bank and asks where her billing statements are…

To her astonishment, her bank said that her mailing address was changed a couple weeks ago, so mails were delivered to the “new” address that Krumsick had no idea of.

“I immediately realized something was not right,” Krumsick said.  “Somebody had stolen my identity.”

Not exactly Melanie.  The bank worked hand-in-glove with your financial identity thief to “help” you change your address.

I’ll prove it.

When your address changed, did anyone call you on your cellphone to confirm the address change?  Did the bank send a letter or postcard to your “former” address?  Send you an email?  Call your home phone number?

Nope.

Don’t worry Melanie.  Any losses your bank incurred will be written off as a business tax-deduction and they aren’t obligated by law to report their mistake.  However, their mistake will be your mess to clean up.

And to the hawkers of “credit monitoring” services, how would a credit monitoring service have alerted Melanie that her credit card billing statements were being mailed to an address that she had not authorized?

John Barksdale