OH MY GOD, you guys. What a week. Before I tell you my story, please note this post has nothing to do with Scarlet Witch, or WandaVision, I just like this picture and feel it is a good representation of the anger and frustration that I felt when I realized yesterday that someone stole my identity.
While we're talking about WandaVision, did any of my Arthur loving friends (the Dudley Moore / Liza Minnelli movie, not the adorable cartoon) catch the reference at the end of the finale?
My girl Darcy trapped the bad guy, evil Director Whatshisface, and said, "Good luck in prison!"
Also before I start, still sick. But better today than I've been so far. My friends keep reminding me that it's okay to have a fever because it means that my body is fighting it. If my body could fight this mystery illness without making me fear I have COVID, that'd be great, though.
I received the COVID negative test on Saturday, but because I am still not feeling well and have an occasional temperature, I have been isolating. More than I usually do, I mean, completely avoiding any interaction with anyone, especially in my building where no one wears a mask. However, a girl has to take her trash out, am I right? I masked up; I gloved up and made the journey downstairs to the front door.
I live on the third floor, and the best thing about that is, I have limited noise from other neighbors. My noise machine takes care of the noise that I do get. Living on the third floor has become more and more difficult since 2019 after my whole hospitalization thing. It was especially fun climbing up three flights of steps when I had a broken foot. So, I take my time. When I eventually arrived at the bottom of the steps, I saw that there was an envelope with my name sitting on top of my mailbox. It had a Texas return address, but what stood out to me was that it had my old apartment number on it.
When I first moved to the town I live in, I lived in the building next to the one where I am now. Also on the third floor. In 2012, my then-landlords sold the buildings and the new landlords, my current landlords, bless them for working with me over the past year, began renovating all the apartments with things that the old apartments didn't have, such as a dishwasher, washer, and dryer. I hoped for an apartment on the first two floors, because you know, the too-many-steps thing. No dice. And also, you would think moving a one-bedroom apartment from one building to the building next to it would be easy? Not so much. I still had to hire movers, and I couldn't afford much, so I ended up moving all the things that I could lift myself by myself.
My mother came over and sat with my cat Quentin to reassure him that the world wasn't ending and that he was safe, while I moved everything the movers hadn't moved. A neighbor took pity on me and helped me get everything from the top floor of the old building to the top floor of the new building. I remember clearly sitting down in the middle of the move to re-tie my shoe. When I got up my legs said, "Nah, girl." And the rest of the move was even more fun!
That was eight years ago. So, receiving mail to the old apartment number, to quote one of my podcasts, was certainly a salmon-colored flag for me. All of my accounts say the current apartment number, there's not one thing that I didn't change. The second salmon-colored flag was that there appeared to be a card in the envelope which I knew only when I picked it up.
I opened the envelope, and it was a letter from Big Bank Incorporated (for reasons passing my understanding, I would rather not name them here, but let's just say the name of the institution rhymes with Place Tank. The letter lovingly welcomed me as a new customer and advised me to try to control my excitement about receiving my new debit card. Sorry, what?
This debit card was a magical thing, the letter went on, and would be the key to using my new checking account to the fullest.
Sorry, WHAT?
I called customer service. The jerk answering the phone literally could not be bothered with helping me. I tried to explain my situation, and that I didn't have an account, and this sarcastic jackass either didn't believe me, didn't care, or both. Or just didn't like women. Another thing is, despite being in my early-late forties (for another two weeks before I enter my middle-late forties), I have a voice that sounds legit super-duper young. When I was still wasting money on a landline, I used to get telemarketers that would ask me for my Mom or Dad. "Well, my Mom passed away and my Dad's in Indiana, would you like to speak to my cat?"
I hung up on this person who clearly had not had enough sensitivity training, or customer service training for that matter, and tried again. That time, I got someone who at least pretended to want to help me. The problem was, he continuously talked over me, and wouldn't let me tell him what happened. Then the condescension began. I'm frankly surprised he didn't call me, "little lady." I hung up again.
I acknowledged that I was in a panic and took a minute, drank some water, and sat down. It didn't help that literally two hours before that my fever had spiked, and I was completely exhausted. I then did a Goog to see if this had happened to anyone else and what the hell was going on.
I searched, "Received debit card from Big Bank Incorporated, but don't have an account." and I found this article. Essentially, Big Bank Incorporated was running a promotion that if you opened an account with them, they would give you $200. So I guess some group of fraudsters used information stolen from one of many data breaches and opened a bunch of accounts, regardless of credit.
Remembering now that fraud is a word, I asked for the fraud department when I called Big Bank Incorporated for the third time. This time I got a woman who was empathetic, sympathetic, compassionate, and kind. She did whatever the thing is that is to be done in this situation. Blocked the account so no one could use it, and marked it as fraud. She gave me the telephone numbers for the Social Security Administration, Experian, and Trans Union, and advised me to call the police and file a fraud report.
In my county and my township, they want you to call 911 if you are reporting anything, whether it is an emergency. I felt really weird calling 911 for this, but I did. They were very kind and told me that an officer would be in touch with me. When the officer called, I told him I'd rather not have anyone come over, because, despite a negative COVID test, I still am sick with a mystery illness. But the only way to file the report is to sign the report, so an officer came over, wearing a mask and keeping a distance.
I really never thought of myself as at risk for identity theft; not that I don't take the steps everyone else takes, such as credit monitoring (by the way, thank you Other Big Bank Monitoring System for totally not noticing that someone did this! That bank's name rhymes with Tells Largo). I figured if someone stole my info, they would somehow determine that my credit was not worth stealing. Lots of student loan debt, old tax debt, and high debt-to-credit ratio? I'm sure everybody wants to sign right up for that. However, with this kind of fraud, it doesn't matter if you have good credit.
I'll end this long story by saying that I checked the credit karma website to see how many data breaches I'd been a victim of.
I've been a victim of 347 data breaches. That is not hyperbole. That is the actual number. And that's of course after 20 years of being online, let alone paying for things online.
So, another project is to go through that list and change my passwords.
Which I'll do right after I call the credit bureaus and the SSA.
Which I'll do right after my fever goes away again.
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