Identity Theft

About a week after the Paradise Camp Fire I fell for a phishing scam email. It looked like it was from amazon and it said there was a security breech. I clicked on the link to “protect” my information. After I entered all of my personal information, I suddenly realized what I was doing and my stomach hit the floor.

We immediately froze my credit with the 3 credit reporting agencies. Fast forward 9 months later… whoever stole my information is unfreezing my credit and has attempted to take out several credit cards in my name. They created Netflix and PayPal accounts using our credit cards. One of our credit cards has been used fraudulently to spend nearly $2500. We found an address in Southern California linked to the fraudulent credit card and immediately filed a police report. Now we have to pay for a credit monitoring service and I still need to fill out a form for the IRS. As you can imagine, we really, really didn’t need another stressful thing to deal with right now!

My friend who knows something about these things, gave me this website with a list of things to do if your identity is ever stolen.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tomsguide.com/amp/us/what-to-do-ssn-stolen,news-18742.html

I hope this type of thing never happens to you. It feels absolutely awful and it is really a lot of work to deal with. I still may need to apply for a new social security number. My self-esteem has taken a huge hit. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, and I know better than to click on those emails. How could I have done something so unwise? I guess it goes to show how a person’s brain can be affected by extremely stressful situations – it stops working properly!

Thanks for following our displacement adventure and for keeping us in your prayers!

Remember, never click on those emails no matter how legitimate they look!