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Identity Theft Worry

For over a year now we have had various items of post go missing. It ranges from DVD's sent in identifiable play.com packages, through to credit card statements (from more than one company) and recently an electricity bill and two lots of photos of our children from truprint.

After complaining bitterly numerous times to Royal Mail (who seemed to treat the matter as a minor irritation) I eventually passed the matter on to Postwatch, who have sorted things out very quickly indeed. Today we received a letter from them, along with a copy letter from Royal Mail to them, telling us that the Royal Mail internal security team, working with the local delivery office manager, have investigated the loss of our mail, and as a result the delivery officer responsible for the non-delivery has been removed from our round and no longer works for Royal Mail. The security team are now trying to locate our missing mail which will be returned to us if found. Further than this Royal Mail cannot comment as they do not wish to prejudice further investigations.

Now this is all very well, but I am VERY concerned that the thief responsible could have used the missing credit card statements and electricity bill to impersonate either myself or my husband and gain credit etc which could impact on our credit worthiness.

I know we can get copies of our files from the credit reference agencies

- but how long should we worry about this....eg at what point would stolen documents become useless? If our worst fears are confirmed how would we go about clearing our name? Are there any steps we can take now to prevent these missing documents being used?

We get quite a lot of mail, and we seldom have days when no mail is received, so I can't see that this would be a matter of the postman feeling he couldn't be bothered to deliver anything - it seems much more likely that every day he has delivered some mail - just not all of it.

Any thoughts/advice would be very welcome.

TIA

Lu

Reply to
Ly
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IANAL (etc)

Since the ex-employee now has no simple means of interception of any items ordered using stolen details, it would probably be quite hard for any credit card company to deny liability for fraudulent use. Whereas before, he might have been able to use your details and delivery address, now he`d have to specify a different address - one that should be easier to track down.

I do remember one scam in the US a few years ago where stolen credit cards would be used with a delivery address down an obscure minimally habitated dirt track, and the fraudsters would simply plonk a letterbox at the side of the road for the goods to be delivered to.

Reply to
Colin Wilson

Good god, that sounds amazingly effective !

This is effectively an admission of liability. Ask RM to pay for a subscription to the Experian, Equifax and Call Credit credit monitoring services.

Might be worth getting a CIFAS entry - although be careful this doesn't cause you hassle.

Info. on the respective websites.

Daytona

Reply to
Daytona

When I opened a bank account and got credit cards etc a year or so ago the utility bills had to be less than 6 months old (3 in some cases).

I guess there's little you can do to in some respects - on the other hand, you know when you'll be doing something which requires a credit check, so maybe you could get your own check done just before then. It wouldn't suprise me if credit agencies offered a pre-check service, to help you get whatever it was that required the check!

Reply to
Alex

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