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| To print out blank chart, see below |
If you don’t live and work in SC, you can just scroll down
to my next blog posting. Otherwise, I’m
sure you’re moaning when you see this subject – a thorn in our sides.
I get it. In fact, if
I have talked to you for any reason in the last week, chances are you’ve had to
hear me b*tch about how much time I have spent protecting my family’s credit
from the notorious SC Cyber Attacker. My
main problem was that my son’s credit is in his college apartment address vs.
our home address.
In case you’ve been out of the country for a couple of
weeks, a hacker got the social security numbers of millions of South Carolinians.
At a MINIMUM, you should sign up for the free credit
monitoring:
Protect My ID; 1-866-578-5422; www.protectmyid.com/scdor
; code is SCDOR123
A fraud alert typically lasts about 90 days. The way I figure it, if a bad guy cyber
attacker is smart enough to hack into a state’s department of revenue database
and steal millions of social security numbers, he’s smart enough to sit on the info
for over 90 days. After 90 days, you can
do another fraud alert. How often do you
change your air filters? You’re supposed
to do it every month. (I’m just sayin’.)
Shoot, he’s probably even smart enough
to have made a copy of it. That way,
after he gets caught and after he spends time in jail, he can then use the info
or sell it to another bad guy. I’m
thinking that the safest thing to do is freeze my credit and then only unfreeze
it when I know a company needs to check it.
A credit freeze is different than a fraud alert. Your credit stays frozen until you unfreeze
it either for a temporary period of time or for a certain company who needs to
check your credit.
Believe it or not, this has already happened to me. I froze my credit last week with all three
credit bureaus. (It is free in many states including SC.) This week a utility company (SCE&G)
needed to check my credit. I found out
they use Equifax, so I went on the Equifax website and unfroze my credit just
for SCE&G. It took about 5
minutes. Now here’s the important
part: YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOUR CREDIT
FREEZE PIN IS!!!! This is scary for a lot of people who can’t
keep up with that kind of stuff. That is
why I am sharing my Credit Monitoring Chart.
I hope I don’t have to tell you to print it out and HANDWRITE the info; do
NOT type in it and do NOT keep it on your hard drive. I hope none of you are that stupid. (BTW for
you grammar freaks – “none” can take a plural verb). I hope none of you is that stupid just
sounded stupid – so I checked so I wouldn’t sound stupid. Who’s on first?!
Anyway, after you have filled out the form (at LEAST the ProtectMyID
part please), put it in a file folder called Credit Monitoring or something
like that. Include the credit freeze
letters that you printed out if you did that part. Keep the file in a safe place, preferably a
locked filing cabinet.
Husband
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Wife
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Child #1
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Child # 2
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ProtectMyID userid
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ProtectMyID password
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E-mail address given to ProtectMyID
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ProtectMyID cust. #
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Experian Credit Freeze PIN
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Date Experian credit freeze done
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TransUnion username
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TransUnion password
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TransUnion Credit Freeze PIN
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Date TransUnion credit freeze done
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Equifax security freeze PIN
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Date Equifax security freeze done
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Here’s the link to print out the blank chart:
If you want to go the extra mile and freeze your credit,
these are the freeze links for the three credit reporting agencies:
Experian https://www.experian.com/freeze
TransUnion
The hacker also got info of over ½ million SC
businesses. I had an LLC that hasn’t
done business in over a year, so I got the form to legally terminate the
LLC. If you’re in the same boat, here’s
the link to the form:
Trust me, I know that doing this stuff is not how you want
to spend your time, but it may prevent an identity theft nightmare.
If you have questions or comments, please e-mail me at Cheryls2CentsWorth@gmail.com
… and that’s my 2 cents’ worth, Cheryl
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