Richelle Hofer

Like 143 million other consumers, my personal information was leaked in the Equifax data breach.

I have a credit monitoring subscription and it has proven very responsive over the years so I wasn’t too worried about identity theft. Within seconds of submitting a (legitimate) credit application I would receive a notice from my credit monitoring software. I felt assured.

I thought that credit monitoring would be enough.

I was wrong.

On December 19th I woke up at about 6 a.m. and checked my email (it’s a bad habit). At about 1:30 a.m. I had received an email from a bank confirming an account opening… and an hour later an email from a loan company saying that my loan was approved. I had been sleeping, not applying for loans and opening bank accounts.

With a sinking feeling I hopped out of bed to investigate.

After a few minutes my fears were confirmed: my identity had been stolen.

I went to work immediately but the fraudsters had a 5 hour head start on me and they were working fast. While I was on the phone with the bank I got ANOTHER email from a loan company regarding a new application.

My panic was growing.

I spent hours creating accounts at all three credit bureaus, freezing my credit, creating an account at chexsystems to stop bank accounts from being opened, checking my credit reports to find all of the places that had made inquiries on my credit and then calling them to see of accounts had been opened.

WHAT A MESS!!! I couldn’t even begin to guess how long I spent trying to rectify all the problems. As I write this it’s been two months and there are still residual things that have to be followed up on.

I learned a valuable lesson: credit monitoring is not enough. I should have frozen my credit the moment I knew my information had been compromised. Yes, it would have been a pain if I needed to apply for credit but I assure you that it would have been easy in comparison to fixing the damage done by the fraudster.

And even though I’ve gotten everything closed and disputed, etc. My credit took a 50 point drop this month due to new inquiries and new accounts being opened.

If you suspect that your personal data has been leaked, I suggest you consider a credit FREEZE at all three credit bureaus. That way no one can open an account in your name (not even you) unless you lift the freeze.

Credit Monitoring just isn’t as effective because:

• Fraudsters don’t keep normal business hours – they work while you sleep
• Fraudsters work FAST – closing accounts takes more time than opening new accounts online. In the time that it takes you to close one account, two more can be opened.
• Correcting the problem takes TONS of TIME

If you’ve been the victim of identity theft, I suggest immediately going to www.identitytheft.gov. Here you will find great resources and checklists to help you get on the path to recovering your life.