Identity theft..has it happened to you?

*kncks on wood* luckily no it hasn't happened to anyone i know or to me

No it hasn't happened to me, but there was someone that got married and had the same name as my maiden name, and they had credit issues and the credit bureaus were going through the phone book calling everyone in the phone book with the last name as my maiden name leaving messages about late payments. One was left at my mom and dad's and they freaked out, but I assured them it wasn't me and called the credit agency and informed them it wasn't appropriate to leave messages on peoples answering machines in the hopes of finding the "right" person. They did not have my parents phone number on any forms because it wasn't me and they don't even know this other person. My maiden name is uncommon,and the credit agencies thought they would get lucky that way. If they were smart they could have found her on myspace or facebook because that's what I did and saw where she lived.

My husband had his identity stole because he signed a petition when he was young and naive.

Hubby had a guy use his debit card for 2 years paying for porn, which was identity stolen.

My MIL is often confused with another lady with the same name too, but she has prefect credit the bank and everything takes care of it.

My husband had it and it was a bitch to get cleared up.

not yet. but I have had companies lose my info and my banks put a fraud alert on my credit rating keeping people from opening up accounts in my name. I have been lucky so far, I am sure at some point I will have to clean up a mess from a ID thief, we all will at some point in our life's.

Thankfully, no, it hasn't happened to me or anyone I know.

My whole identity no, but I have had credit card numbers stolen.

I have never had anything like this happen to me, but my partner had someone nab a checking account number once. Wasn't a huge problem to clean up but obviously not really fun.

It's really a difficult situation because the credit reporting agencies are very unfriendly. The number one thing i do to protect is, shred all documents. So far it hasn't happened to me. I hear it can take years to sort out.