Does anyone know what I can do as an US citizen abroad to protect myself now? I tried to get a free copy of my credit report but it required a us address to process. I tried to set up an account to freeze my credit but those require a us address as well.
Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
131–140 of 292 posts
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#132This is great advice for writing professional demand letters in general, beyond just identity theft-related.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#133The kalzumeus.com article is informative and accessible, especially if your identity has been stolen. If your identity has not yet been stolen, the NYTimes has an article titled "Equifax's Instructions Are Confusing. Here's What to Do Now." [0] tl;dr: Freeze requests for your credit data at the big 3: Equifax [1], Experian [2], and Transunion [3]. (Note: these services may require multiple attempts, some persistence,…
I'm just going with the fraud alert (free) for now. Maybe it's moot, but it's really tough for me to justify giving all three companies money due to something like this.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important not-a-lawyer advice: recording phone calls without the other party's consent is illegal in wide swathes of the U.S., but keeping copies of letters is legal everywhere.
Question: When the party states that "this call may be recorded for quality or training purposes", does that give you reciprocal permission to record the call or do you have to explicitly ask for it? Any lawyers with opinion on this?
If I tell someone "my nose may be touched" then I'm allowing them to touch my nose.
If I tell someone "this call may be recorded", then surely I'm giving them permission to record the call. Their ability to detect my lies seems to be a reasonable "quality" purpose.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I put my brother in a bad spot. It doesn't really hurt him much right now but I messed up some business work using CCs under his name. With his permission of course. I can't pay them off right now, but I've managed to get my credit score close to 800. So I'm going to be getting a couple of credit cards and balance transfer my debts over to myself. All the decent or better CCs I've seen, offer pretty nice opening…
Spend $3k and get $500 in rewards... Why not just spend $2k instead? Maybe spend the time increasing your income. (I have done this... Rarely would the hassle.)
I'm spending the money anyway. Don't see the issue in this case.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can spend completely normally and still make money from CCs if you pay them off. Everyone needs basics like food (supplies), transportation costs, and household/hygiene items. Maybe you're better than us, but most people also have utilities like internet and cell phone bills. You likely paid for however you typed that comment. Putting that on a credit card with rewards and paying it off asap wouldn't hurt you one…
> discipline not to over spend Like the discipline to never use Facebook? Extremely rare. And psychologically expensive.
I'd say FB is way different than the discipline to not over spend on CCs in a community like this. Not over spending on CCs being far easier.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#137> Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department. This is…
How do you do this from a technical perspective? I've tried to look for solutions to do this in the past but never found any good options.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#138The CFPB should definitely be added to the list of lawyer alternatives. I had a minor issue with a bank and filing a complaint with the CFPB got it quickly resolved whereas my state's consumer protection division didn't even bother writing back.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, save, then buy if you still want to. You can buy a house with no credit history. Look it up.
According to credit suisse, only 33m people in this world have 1m+ USD of assets. So, out of 3.5 billion adults in this world, only 0.7% have the ability to buy a home in a large city in cash. What, then, should the other 99.3% of people do?
It seems odd to extrapolate to the entire world's population of adults, yet rule out the possibility of living anywhere that houses cost less than a million dollars.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important not-a-lawyer advice: recording phone calls without the other party's consent is illegal in wide swathes of the U.S., but keeping copies of letters is legal everywhere.
Question: When the party states that "this call may be recorded for quality or training purposes", does that give you reciprocal permission to record the call or do you have to explicitly ask for it? Any lawyers with opinion on this?
This again varies between jurisdictions, as far as I'm aware.