I Thwarted ID Thieves

After they stole my name, I switched into high gear to prevent them from hijacking my sterling credit history.

- Mark Solheim

SOME 41 MILLION AMERICANS have been victims of identity theft, says a recent survey from Bankrate.com, but I (irrationally) always thought I’d be immune. Then, last September, I got the call.

My wife and I were in the Lake District of England, in a well-worn 18th-century hotel not far from the bucolic estate where Wordsworth lived and composed his poetry. The caller was a woman from the fraud department of Capital One, asking if I’d applied for a second Capital One credit card. I had not. Capital One turned down the application, she told me in a soothing voice. “But whoever tried to open this account has your Social Security number and date of birth,” she said. The credit application raised a red flag because the imposter listed his (actually, my) address as Springfield, Ill. I live in Washington, D.C., and have for most of my life.

She told me to contact the three major credit bureaus, review my reports and consider putting a fraud alert on my accounts. I already knew the drill, because Kiplinger’s gives the same advice to all victims of ID theft.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Just before we left on vacation, I had spotted two small deposits to my checking account from PayPal—an indication that someone was trying to connect a PayPal account with my bank account. I had spent precious pre-vacation hours closing my checking account, opening a new one, ordering new checks, and changing direct deposits and automatic payments.