the other day i decided to have my routine look at the credit files , now i know they are soft searches and wont be seen by any one but you can imagine my supprise when on transunion there were 12 soft searches for insurance quotes and on experian 22
now on the date the ‘quotes’ were asked for i was at my mums 50 miles from my laptop fitting her smoke alarms , so had no intention of ‘looking’ for insurance apart from that my insurance isnt due to may
i have no idea how some one could have got my details , the good thing is for personal reasons i wont disclose on line they wont be able to obtain credit in my name still worrying though
Have you ever gotten one in the past? As In done by yourself. Some comparison sites sign you up to do it automatically each year until you opt out
One of the most known comparison sites always automatically signs you up automatically after you use the site and will keep doing soft searches each year for the same details you put, especially for car insurance but a quick opt out stops it.
i would say yes b ut some of them have the totaly wrong address format , it typed twice and my dob wrong on a couple of them one the day is wrong the other the year is wrong
In that case you could always contact the company who did the search and they might be able to help you and tell you the source. Since you say it’s wrong in multiple different ways it could be someone just putting random details of yours hoping they’re correct or the agent who miss typed.
Urgh. So many ways though, the primary one is fishing links. Although I also found out a few years ago that going through peoples trash is way more common than people expect (buy a shredder people seriously!).
Tell your bank - they may offer to mark your credit account with a notice that there’s potential for identity theft - although be wary of that, it’s a slight double edged sword because I’ve seen it lead to valid credit applications being refused too (it shouldn’t do, but in some cases it might anyway).
Make sure your computer is up to date and us a good anti virus that’s working (windows defender is fine, consider Malawarebytes free as a good second line of defence)
Use two factor wherever you can
Review your social media and web presence, make sure there’s not accidentally too much personal info on display.
i have a cracking shredder that work provided me we have had issues with royal mail in the past due to covid etc i was thinking of the protective marker from cifas but not sure how that would affect me and my insurance renewal in may
In theory, it won’t affect it. In reality… it’s difficult to say because we have no idea how banks assess credit risk or score. They should have a system in place to account for these and do extra checks, but do they all? (from at least anecdotal evidence I suspect not)
we have had issues with royal mail in the past due to covid etc i was thinking of the protective marker from cifas but not sure how that would affect me and my insurance renewal in may