Agreed. It is astounding to me that a private company can accuse me of a crime with no proof that I did it, and then the government will enforce that without question. You would think they would need fingerprints or something to prove that a particular person did something.

How close does such an accusation come to defamation?

One lawsuit away.

They're not accusing you of a crime, though. They're pinning debt on you. It's not just a pedantic difference either, because it means it falls under an entirely different body of law for assumption of liability.

Before I actually had kids was the first .com bust... I was unemployed as were many in bay area and I filed for unemployment or medical (i cant recall now) but I was told that I was ineligible for benefits because I had a bunch of unpaid child support and other debts in Los Angeles... (never lived there, no kids at time, avoid LA all my life)

It took me months to prove that I wasa childless, 20-something dork in bay area...

nightmare - but any "credit" agency is scum

Not to be that guy, but I have one better.

My nephew is now 20. When he was 5 we gifted him some cash in a savings account (to teach him about money stuff). We were immediately served notice that he was overdue on two mortgages. It took three years to get that straightened out (and find out that his ss# was already compromised).

What a mess. What kind of an agency would see the ss#for a literal child and just think, yep, this is fine.

Sounds kinda similar to a former coworker ~2 decades ago. Tried to get a mortgage, rejected, he obtained his credit file...and ~80% of the stuff in "his" credit report was for similar-named people (mostly living in the same part of the U.S.). Report said that he had purchased a house at age 5, based on the well-paid job he got at Ford Motor Co. at age 4, etc., etc.

It's pretty much impossible to get your free annual credit report these days. It used to be relatively painless, but now you get slammed with ads for credit monitoring or whatever useless products. Or, the website just doesn't work, redirect to a page telling you to send a letter to some rando PO box.

I used to get my free credit report every year, but I stopped, which I'm sure is exactly what these scumbags want.

Which website (AnnualCreditReport.com? or the three bureaux' own sites? or some other third-party website (which?)) and what do you mean "the website" just doesn't work? Be aware there are tons of unaffiliated copycat websites claiming to be the official one and just want to serve you ads; don't use them.

IME AnnualCreditReport.com was easy-to-use and never sends ads. It sounds like you were tricked into using something else. If you genuinely had an issue with AnnualCreditReport.com (unlikely), please do tell the FTC: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports

Have you tried this site? https://www.annualcreditreport.com

LexisNexis Risk reported two inaccurate judgements in my risk report, preventing me from getting a mortgage in my name for almost a decade. It was finally settled in a class action, and I received a check for $625. I wish a terrible time to the individuals who were directly involved at LexisNexis, because someone, somewhere decided to just not care about their data hygiene because there was no incentive to.

https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/

I mean that's really what it comes down to, isn't it? The incentives. Why should any of them care? They make thousands of errors with regularity that cause millions of consumers endless hours of agony trying to get jobs, trying to buy homes, trying to buy cars, but like, we can't not use them. In my entire long life I have never once done business with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Yet each of them have an entire drawer's worth of data on me, all of which is stored incredibly insecurely, is rife with errors, and the only time I really hear from them is when they've once again screwed something up and have dropped it in my lap like a cat showing up with a dead bird: "Heads up, you gotta handle this."

Like, name one thing they actually do right. Literally anything. I challenge anyone who reads this to name a single bad thing that would happen if all these leech companies got Thanos-snapped out of the universe tomorrow.

Banks would have to find an alternative. And that's a vacuum which could be filled with worse actors. I keep close tabs with all 3 bureaus because that's the reality we live in.

> Banks would have to find an alternative.

We might have worse actors or arbitrary decisions or more expensive loans. Or, why not, all three!

That's awful. I assume you didn't remove yourself from the class action, because you didn't have or want to invest the time and resources into suing them yourself? $625 is a laughable amount of money for the amount of bullshit they put you through.

Your assumption is correct. Time is non renewable and I instead focus on higher leverage efforts, such as donating my time to Congressional representatives and federal regulators who craft legislation or attempt enforcement actions (respectively). Do things that scale and all that jazz.

> My nephew is now 20. When he was 5...

So that was 15 years ago when these mortgages were taken out in his name? Placing it between 2007 and 2008.

That's basically right at the inflection point when the housing market had gotten out of control and started crashing down. This was caused because anyone could get a mortgage, regardless of whether they could afford it or who they were. The banks were accused of doing zero due diligence. In some cases no income verification, no identity verification, no job verification, etc.. You could take a mortgage out in your dogs name, and also apparently a 5 year old's name too.

I like to think that the system is better now, but that's probably a fantasy.

To make this worse, they won't even let you apply a credit freeze online until you're eighteen years old.

I had this come up when I was buying a house.

I have a very common name and some guy 20-30 years older than me had past due child support. I also have no kids. This was my first house purchase so I was completely ignorant of the process. What blew my mind is that before verifying whether or not that was me, they informed the sellers of it. I forget the process I went through to prove it wasn't me, I probably just showed them the guys age vs mine or something. That was wild though, like, the sellers could've just cancelled the sale right there if they didn't want to sell to a supposedly deadbeat dad. I couldn't believe they informed the sellers.

Buying a house is awful. Telling someone all of my finances and everything else when I already have an approved mortgage. Ugh. I did have a worse experience SELLING that house though, if you can imagine.

What a miserable process. Worst thing is that these functions will increasingly be black boxes. You'll just get a negative result from the seller or buyer or landlord or bank and have no recourse. And that's especially unfair when we're talking about something as vital as shelter for decent citizens.

Let me rephrase it so the meaning of what you just said impregnate my mind: you were denier money because their records showed you badly needed it. Sound to me the credit agencies aren't the only evil.

This is the magic of reconceptualizing fraud as "identity theft" in the first place.

There's a pretty funny sketch about that: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

It was never more than marketing for "identity theft protection". When you put it like that, it starts to sound an awful lot like paying a protection racket doesn't it?

That's ancillary; the biggest thing is offloading liability that would sensibly lie with the institution that lent money to a fictitious version of you.

Is it actually a problem or are people just worrying about it? I dont see how a bank or court can enforce anything if you didn't do it.

It's a major concern. When someone steals your identity, they can incur debts, commit crimes, and manipulate data under your name. Victims often spend extensive time and energy clearing up the aftermath. While it seems counterintuitive, banks and institutions usually hold you liable until you can definitively prove the activity wasn't yours. Essentially, in the realm of identity theft, it's often 'guilty until proven innocent' rather than the other way around

Sure I can guess that too. I haven't ever seen anyone with problems though. Does it really happen? Given that nearly every SSN and address has leaked you'd think it would be everywhere.

I had this experience after the Equifax hack a while ago when something like 100M+ people's info was stolen. Until I froze my credit I was getting phone calls every few days asking if I had _really_ tried to open some line of credit I had never heard of. The people calling me explained that ever since the Equifax hack they had to do a bunch more due diligence because all they were getting was fraud. No lines of credit were successfully opened in my name, and the issue stopped completely once I froze all my credit.

I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.

An example from last month. "Byron Bay breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts" https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-25/byron-bay-data-breach...

In Australia.

In the Southern District of Florida, United States of America:

    But then she was charged in the United States with offences including trademark infringement, and was told to pay damages of $US1.2 million ($1.8 million).

Her 'bogo-debt' can still be sold for cents on the dollar to local (Australian) collecters who might haress her, future vacations to US STeates and Territories are now ill advised, etc.

It's more like "you spent it until you can prove you didn't", which might be worse.

That's odd, I'm in Pennsylvania and have had multiple fraudulent purchases with my accounts over the years. Every single time, the bank put the money back in my account within days and I never heard anything more about it.

fraudulent purchases are not identity theft.

In the West they give you money in someone's else name without an ID? Must be a paradise.

It's amazing what you can do without an ID in the States.