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I WAS A VICTIM OF identity theft. It wasn’t anything I did. Rather, it was what my former employer did.
During the pandemic, many employees were working remotely, including a member of the human resources department. She received an email from the CEO requesting that she send him the W-2s for all employees. So she did. Unfortunately, the email wasn’t from the CEO. It was sent from a shopping mall in Saudi Arabia.
As soon as she hit send, she realized she’d done something wrong, so she contacted the CEO. He took steps to minimize the damage, but our private information was now public.
Since then, there have been multiple attempts to take advantage of me financially. Luckily, so far, none has been successful. My primary line of defense was freezing my credit.
This hasn’t been a problem because I’m not interested in borrowing money. The credit cards that I already have are all I’m ever going to have. The house we live in will probably be the last house we buy, so I won’t need to take out any loans.
While identity theft has caused me to take precautions, I’ve been able to live comfortably within these restrictions. Still, I’m aware that new problems are waiting for me around every corner.
Lately, I’ve seen articles and news reports about senior scams. Apparently, on top of my identity being compromised, I now need to be aware of people trying to trick me into giving them money. Oh great, just what I need.
One unusual thing about me: I don’t use a cell phone. I have one. I just don’t use it. When I’m asked what my cell phone number is, I lie and say I don’t have one.
I do this because, as soon as you give a business your cell phone number, everything that you get from then on is to your cell phone. In my case, the business could say, “We sent you a text message.” That might be true. But I likely wouldn’t see the message in time since I don’t look at my phone consistently. To make life simpler, I give out my home phone number.
When the phone rings, I check caller ID and don’t pick up unless I recognize the caller. If I don’t know who it is and the call is important, I hope the person will leave a message. Not many messages get left, so I assume these folks don’t have anything important to tell me or my family.
These people might be senior scammers who want to tell me my son has been in a car accident. Or that my wife is stuck on the side of the road and needs a gift card sent to her. Or it might be one of the grandkids I don’t have who desperately needs college tuition money.
For people like my wife, who feel the need to pick up the phone every time it rings, my approach is torture. The ringing of the phone makes her feel it has to be someone important and she must answer. Otherwise, the world will come to a screeching halt.
I don’t feel that way. I’m happy to let the phone ring and ring, and not pick up. The one exception is when my wife is out. I always pick up when she calls, in case there’s a problem. I’ve also trained my son not to pick up unless the caller ID indicates it’s my wife. Result: I enjoy a simple, quiet retirement—one that’s free of scammers.
FIVE TIMES IN MY LIFE things have been taken from me without my permission.
The first time was my fault. I left my spring coat in the dormitory lounge where my girlfriend lived. A few days later, I saw another guy wearing it. Instead of asking for my coat back, I decided it was best not to admit that I’d forgotten it. As the saying goes, “Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.”
The second theft happened in the parking lot of my auto repair class. Emerging from class, I discovered that my 1969 Mustang was up on milk crates, with the two front tires missing. I had one spare in the trunk but not two. A classmate drove me to my mother’s house, so I could get my snow tires and drive my car home.
The third loss was after a night of drinking in New York City. I was descending the stairs to the subway when I took out my wallet to get my transit card. All of a sudden, someone grabbed my wallet and ran down into the subway station. I wasn’t in the best condition to give chase because of the amount of alcohol I’d drunk.
This loss created a follow-on problem. I was scheduled to fly to England two days later. The thief now had all my credit cards and identification. Luckily, I’d bought traveler’s checks two days before. They were safe in my apartment in Brooklyn, along with my passport and plane ticket. The only thing I needed was cash.
When I went to my bank, however, the teller asked to see my identification. I didn’t have ID because it was in my stolen wallet. I pleaded with the bank employee, who took pity on me and gave me money from my savings. I was still able to go to England, short on cash, but with enough to get by.
The fourth time I was robbed was when I came home to my Brooklyn apartment to discover someone had broken into the place from the fire escape. The thief took my college ring, my stereo and my TV. To prevent future burglaries, I had metal bars installed on the window.
What was the fifth robbery? It’s the incident described above, when my identity was stolen. Someone working in human resources at my employer thought she was sending everyone’s W-2 to our CEO—but she was responding to a scam e-mail from someone logged on from a shopping mall in Saudi Arabia. If I hadn’t frozen my credit, I could have lost a lot of money.
All five times my property was stolen, I chose not to wallow in self-pity. Rather I did something about it, like fetching those snow tires for my Mustang. Sure, I like my belongings as much as the next guy, but I also know they can disappear when you least expect it.
I’ve learned not to get too attached to most things. Still, some belongings have sentimental value. These are the hardest to lose. I make copies of things like family photographs, so I can still enjoy them even if the originals are lost.
Insurance will reimburse you for some property losses. The best way to collect is to keep accurate records of your covered belongings. Taking photos of your stuff and saving receipts can help with an insurance claim.
Just know you probably won’t come out whole because of things like the policy deductible and depreciation. When my tires were stolen, I learned what depreciation meant. I wanted new tires. The insurance company asked me how many miles I had on them. After I told them, I didn’t get enough from the insurance proceeds to cover the new tires. Lesson learned.
David Gartland was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and has lived in central New Jersey since 1987. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the State University of New York at Cortland and holds various professional insurance designations. Dave’s property and casualty insurance career with different companies lasted 42 years. He’s been married 36 years, and has a son with special needs. Dave has identified three areas of interest that he focuses on to enjoy retirement: exploring, learning and accomplishing. Pursuing any one of these leads to contentment. Check out Dave’s earlier articles.
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4 days ago I returned home from a nice 12 day road trip. I subscribe to the Post offices app to be informed of what is in my mail so, I knew I had a letter from Social Security waiting.
Well, it informed me they were going to send my payment to the other bank I had chosen.
Of course I hadn’t switched banks. I had to wait on hold over an hour to be told to go to the downtown office. I waited . . over an hour and they manually switched back to my own bank, and, recommended blocking internet access to the account.
The big concerning issue? I asked how could someone hack into my account? ‘We have no idea’ was the answer. NUTS!
In college, you should have asked for your coat back, probably would have given it to you.
Living without a cell is draconian
Good advice David.
I have frozen my credit for many years. On the rare occasion someone needs to check my credit (buy a car, new phone, etc.), I can unfreeze it long enough for my credit to be checked by logging into the specific credit card company and unfreezing it temporarily. This is simple to do. In addition to freezing their credit, people should establish accounts with all three of the major credit bureaus so they can unfreeze it as needed.
I messed up one time and called a number from an email that was allegedly from my bank. This guy was very convincing and I stupidly gave him some personal identity info. Lesson learned. Always call the published numbers for companies you do business with, not the numbers in an email.
Why is it that this is a problem in the US and not the rest of the world?
This is one of the many underdeveloped aspects of the US.
Nick, is it? I would think the scams are all over the world.
A lot of good thoughts and suggestions here.
I would add that when I have to see a new doctor or dentist many of their intake forms still request my SSN. I decline to provide my SSN to those who are not entitled to get that information. I have not been refused service, yet.
I recently had an argument about that. I won.
We have cellphones to keep in touch with our children and siblings and their children.
And these days many, if not most, “rewards”
programs can be associated with a phone number. Instead of having to use a credit card number.
For a number of years I had a landline and a cell phone. My defense against spam calls was to give out the landline number but leave the ringers on the phones turned off. I left the sound on on the answering machine. I have no idea how many people called and didn’t leave a message. Now I just have a cell phone I seem to get very few spam calls or texts. I don’t know whether spammers are still using the old number, or T-Mobile is doing a stellar job of blocking.
Regarding those annoying phone calls, there is a setting on most cell phones to block all unrecognized callers. They are sent to voicemail and very rarely leave messages.
My SSN was compromised in the recent National Data breach. Not sure there’s much to do about it except freeze credit, and fortunately my wife and I froze our credit some time ago. We need to get on our parents though.
There’s always more to do to become a harder target, unfortunately.
If you’re not yet using a good password manager to replace old, weak passwords with strong, random ones, now is the time. Be sure to enable two factor authentication with it.
If you haven’t already, create a login.gov account and an ssa.gov account. Also: be sure 2FA is enabled on sensitive accounts if available: your email account (password resets), your cellular service account (texted 2FA codes), banks/credit unions, and brokerages.
Also, in addition to freezing Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, freeze Chex Systems which is used when creating new bank accounts. That may make account hijack attacks harder.
I meant nothing more to do specific to the SSN compromise. We’ve done all the above, almost – ChexSystems was a new one for me. Will freeze that too. Thanks for mentioning.
All of that is relevant to the National Data leak and higher risks of hacks and identity theft. That leak included a slew of sensitive data useful for a variety of cybercrimes. Incredibly irresponsible.