How did he lose $3k?

I've been curious about the real-world impacts of identity theft for quite some time. In the article linked, the author's only obvious losses were a) on the home mortgage (couldn't cosign; worse rate) and b) at the airport, with TSA (which I don't get; how did his credit rating have an impact on the secondary security screening?).

It's unclear to me why I should care that much about identity theft, or what a thief can do. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a huge hassle to get calls from scammed creditors or be unable to obtain consumer credit, but I am fortunate enough not to need credit and I already have the credit cards and bank accounts I need.

There is the whole IRS fraudulent return thing, which could be quite tedious to sort out and meantime would take real money. But that's about all I can think of unless you need consumer credit.

You've never lived in a state where your car insurance premium depends on your credit score, have you. I think you understand perfectly well the problems identity theft can cause, but you're just being intentionally obtuse.

> It's unclear to me... what a thief can do.

Um... well... how about anything you can do with your identity, except it's someone else? Do you really not understand why that's a bad thing?

> You've never lived in a state where your car insurance premium depends on your credit score, have you.

Hmm, I don't know, to be honest. That hadn't occurred to me.

> I think you understand perfectly well the problems identity theft can cause, but you're just being intentionally obtuse.

Huh? No, I was asking a question. Why would someone be intentionally obtuse about something like this? I can't figure out how my comment was misinterpreted, but it certainly was. I apologize for my lack of clarity in the original post.

> Um... well... how about anything you can do with your identity, except it's someone else? Do you really not understand why that's a bad thing?

"Anything you can do" isn't very clear, hence my desire to understand the threat better. Assuming I have no need for consumer credit (like, actual loans), it's just not clear to me in which cases a bad credit score can be a problem. Auto insurance had not occurred to me, so thanks for that example.

Once again, I think you may have misinterpreted my comment in some manner. Do people really troll each other over, like, identity theft? Weird. But I wasn't. :)