Looks like i have had my ID stolen :(

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

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Do you have any renewals coming up for insurance?

nope car isnt due to may and my partner deals with the house ones

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.

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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.

I don’t really see why anyone would be looking to take out insurance in someone else’s name so it’s an odd one. You can always contact the companies that carried out the search and ask for more details as to why it happened

yeah going through them all now also raised disputes with transunion and equifax

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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).

Report it to https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ . And follow general cybersecurity advice like:

  • Change your passwords and use a password manager
  • 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.

And buy that shredder…

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yeah doing that now more of a pain than any thing else

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i have a cracking shredder that work provided me :slight_smile: 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

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I had to do PR recently and had an RBS Credit Card approved since without extra steps. With insurance they might let it go through and follow up later if they aren’t sure it’s in fact you; or if you just go with auto renewal they shouldn’t even check

On second thoughts I’m not actually sure how reassured I should feel about that actually!

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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)

It may be a case of better to be safer though.

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Sadly there are all sorts of insurance scams out there that involve doing precisely this :weary:

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Ah, great. So nobody can ever be safe

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Yup.

  • Insurance on a car, so that if it is scanned by a ANPR scanner it seems legit and covered.
  • Insurance on some tech and then make a claim on.
  • Same with home insurance

Stuff like that

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