Falling victim to identity theft is never a situation fun to find yourself in, as I discovered recently when I learned my personal information was used to produce a fraudulent tax return. Now that everything has been taken care of and things start to unfold, I share the lessons I learned to not only help other victims of tax identity theft, but also to inform non-victims problems I met so they can learn from experience - and pass this information to others. After all, education is one of the best means of defense against scams and fraud. That said, here are three things I learned from falling tax identity theft.
1. Monitoring on everything. Call the IRS and learning of the fraud was just the tip of the iceberg, because the sad reality of dealing with a government agency - or any organization for that matter - is that you have to follow on all. This means that not only I had to spend another hour to call the IRS, but I had to also save on my tax return of the state, which ended up needing a little extra attention because they were unable to confirm my employer (they could not confirm whether this was the result of fraud or other reasons). In addition, I also had to make calls to my credit card and the bank to let them know that I am a victim of identity theft and request that they make a note on my accounts to take additional measures to verify my identity before making any changes to the account or conduct a transaction in person.
Note that one of the aspects of flying that I did not need to follow was the fraud alerts, such as credit bureaus each sent me notice me namely the alerts have been set. Monitoring is a good idea whenever you have a question about your credit or identity, so you can be sure order was (or is being) restored.
2. Be skeptical. While I'm still skeptical about something or someone ask my personal information, I am even more skeptical now. Every time I get something in the mail that asks me to mail something or call to provide information, I choose to confirm the accuracy of that company by checking for myself (using Google - no website indicated on the documents) to make sure it is legitimate. For example, I finally received a notice from the IRS explaining that I am a victim of tax fraud and instead of calling the phone number on the letter to follow, I chose to use the phone number who gave me the IRS agent when I learned of the fraud. While the number of the letter was probably legitimate, the skeptic in me, which is more alive than it was before, said not to trust him.
The only thing I find myself struggling with is to remember that not everything is a scam and I should not consider it as such. This is where monitoring comes in. To check the legitimacy of a notice, e-mail or phone call, I do a quick Google search to see what I can find. If it's an email, looking for the e-mail address; for an opinion, I seek the company / organization and address and telephone calls, I search the phone number. When it is a scam, where a couple of telephone calls were, page titles will read something like "Warning: this is a scam" On the other hand, if it is legitimate, securities or link to the page the business on Yelp, the Better business Bureau or other similar sites. The essential thing to remember is that everything should not be taken at face value, and a quick search can save you the headache of identity theft or fraud.
3. Security is more important than you think. As I explained in my first post on the flight, I've always been someone who has taken steps to protect my identity, to enable two-step authentication on all I could disable geolocation on my phone and everything else. While some members of my family and friends have commented to me that I am being too careful, it may well be that these security measures helped limit the damage that has been done by fraud. Since there is no way of knowing how my information has been compromised, it is difficult to prove these helped security steps. That said, they certainly do not hurt. As such, I encourage all of you - if you are victim of identity theft or not - to take steps to protect your identity. While nothing can completely prevent identity theft, avoiding security errors in your daily life will go a long way toward making you more informed and prepared.
Keep our blog of protection against identity theft to learn more about identity theft and other steps you can take to protect your identity.