Ownzored Part 5

And it goes on and on and on...

Update. Identity thief has also started up a second Sprint PCS account in my name with two phones... which I discovered when I got the bill. This is in addition to the phone they already tried to add to my pre-existing Sprint PCS account. I was able to call them up and kill it with no charge to myself, but they've had the phones since Oct. 4th.

I also got a "Welcome" package from Citibank for a new banking account that somebody tried to set up in my name. This is scaring me, since they always ask for Mother's maiden name for that kind of stuff. I'm sure it's a matter of public record, but I can't think of any way I leaked it. As you might guess, my faith in this whole system is not as sound as it might have been before last week. Of course, I axed the bogus Citibank bank account too. I might axe the credit card account completely, though pretty soon I won't be able to start new accounts anywhere for a while.

I think I know where I screwed up. Last month I put a voter registration form, change of address form, and a bunch of bill payments in the outgoing mailbox at my job. That mail was basically a complete set of every piece of information you would need to impersonate me, minus my Mother's maiden name.

Yes, I realize how incredibly stupid this was of me. I mean, who am I to think I can trust the people I work with or the mail carriers not to intercept my mail and write down all of my juicy personal info!? Needless to say, I'm switching to the Blue boxes from now on, at least until I'm shown how stupid and insecure that is too... then I'm going to be training passenger pidgeons.

Thanks to Dale, I had some good resources to look into what to do next. Bright and early on Monday, I'm going to be flagging my info at the three big credit agencies as being haxored. It'll get in my way for a while, but I can live with that. I need to make myself an inconvenient target.

I also filed a police report today, though I don't know if it will do any good. Citibank will probably do most of the work, once they send me the affidavit to fill out with the list of bogus charges. $3000 is not chump change... (to me, anyway). I'm sure they'll have a good fighting spirit. Sprint can't be very happy either, since the perp basically got two working cell phones for a week on their dime.

Not that I think they'll get caught. I only hope they're done with me, now that I'm paying attention. There are millions more suckers just like me out there.

What weirds me out is how all this stuff keeps coming to my house. That isn't very clandestine. I was able to kill the Citibank bank account before anybody was able to use it (I think). I was able to reverse a phone shipment... I was able to kill the iBook order. I wonder what the deal is.. is this all a smokescreen to keep me busy while somebody frames me for something big? Or is this just somebody throwing out everything they can to see what they can make stick? What am I going to find in my mailbox on Monday?

All of these charges and bogus accounts so far were basically made at about the same time, so I hope this thing blows over soon. Every day I get something new in the mail, and every day I have to cancel another bogus account or fill out another report.

I've been asked a few times if I think this is something personal against me, and so far I don't think so. I may not be the most loveable guy on the planet, but I'm not aware of any actual enemies. But I do worry that if this person is taken in for this that I might have earned an enemy. I don't know if my next move is supposed to be moving out of town.

This big cloud of question marks is killing me.