I am one of those unlucky statistics who was the victim of completely random identity theft. I am not one to be terribly careful with safeguarding personal information – especially online – and so I should have been wary that something like this may happen but truth be told I never gave it a passing thought. When it did happen to me, however, I was completely confused. Not just angry (which I was) or scared (which I was) but also very, very confused. I hardly kept track of every little purchase I made on any given day and it became nearly impossible to separate my activities from that of the identity thief. There was much to disentangle and my credit report was a significant tool in the process.

I was one of the lucky ones in that I was completely up on my credit report – I ordered free credit reports every year just so I would know what my credit score was from each of them. I was fixated on buying a house and knew that good credit was my key to getting a mortgage. I had not thought of ordering free credit reports to alert me to identity theft if and when it should occur, but that’s exactly what happened. I began to notice strange activity – late payments for cards I didn’t have – and that was that.

Now that I am engaged in the legal process of finding and bringing to justice my identify thief I have also been called upon to make sense of my finances and I have used my credit report as a road map of sorts – the line between the financial life that was mine and mine alone and one in which I was being impacted by stolen identity. This has only validated my decision to continually order free credit reports – especially now knowing just how beneficial they can be for a variety of reasons.

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