Continued excitement from last week.

This identity theft thing is a life-changer!

Even though as a victim I qualify for a 7–year fraud alert with the credit agencies, with one simple phone call to Experian, I opted for a 90-day alert on all three agencies [I misspoke last week, thinking it was a 30-day alert].

Then I joined Todd Davis’s Lifelock for $99/year. They monitor your personal information in various locales. Besides alerting you, they purportedly assist you [financially, too] to clear up any identity mess.

Then I heard from the loan company that they had received my police report but needed their bank’s name added to it. So, I went to the local police station, filled out a supplementary report, and faxed it over to the bank.

I went to the local Bank of America and found out that the account from which the crook took the $1,000, was NOT in my name, and was closed due to fraud. That should be good for me because the loan company knows this fact.

Now I’m waiting to hear from the detective in charge of this case. I expect I’ll tell him/her how much I hope they can catch this crook. If I were rich, I’d hire a private detective!

My Wife, the Skeptic

Believe me, if you haven’t been a victim of identity theft, you probably don’t know how much it affects you. I told my wife to sign up for Lifelock. But she would rather wait until somebody steals her identity. And there’s a fairly good chance someone will one day.

In a way, I consider myself very lucky — it could have been a much larger loan. And it could have gone negative on my credit. There could have been a much larger mess. Most importantly, I NOW feel quite SECURE in knowing that this kind of thing will likely be stopped in its tracks NEXT TIME.

You can reach lucky me at: robertebsen@hotmail.com