If a person was robbed and the thieves took the file of important papers, including adult and baby SS cards & birth certificates, passports, marriage license, etc., other than freezing credit, what can one do to protect against future identity fraud? What about the baby? Apparently you cannot freeze credit when one does not have credit? How do you protect someone who won’t even use their SSN for over a decade, but a scumbag has their info?
They don’t think that the person was targeting that info, it just happened that they bought a new house and just moved in, all the ‘important stuff’ was in one box-cash, jewelry, laptops, back up hard drives, and the important files.
They should contact the IRS and request a PIN for each person whose SSN card was taken. A new PIN will be issued each year. You have to include the PIN on your tax return in order for it to be processed.
We made the request for my husband in August, after someone filed a fraudulent unemployment claim in his name. Just yesterday, we got a SECOND letter from the IRS saying that they haven’t been able to process the request yet. Ugh. I hope someone doesn’t file for a refund in his name before we submit our tax return.
I would wait to signup for the IRS code unless you really know that you need it.
That code and the problems it has caused have been the worst lingering affects of our identity theft issue that happened several years ago. You should know that once the IRS knows that you need this code, you need it for the rest of your life. We have had issues with it not arriving in the mail and with the computer system kicking us out despite entering the code.
Last year we didn’t get the code in the mail and IRS couldn’t seem to send us a replacement code. We therefore could not file electronically and had to send it in by paper. They still have not processed our return. This has led to problems with social security because they pull data from the IRS system in order to calculate how much you need to pay for Medicare. The IRS system thinks we made zero in 2019 because the return still hasn’t been entered. This led to social security assuming we were very poor and sending us s big refund of my husbands Medicare premiums. We called the IRS and asked if we should resend the return. They say no. They know that have it but they have a big backlog and will get to it eventually. We ended up sending a copy of our paper return to social security and we think it this is straightened out now, at least for this year. Next year it will all start again. I would never voluntarily enter this IRS hell unless I knew for a fact that someone was using my social security this way.
We don’t have a police department in our town so we called the county sheriff to file a report. The guy said they received many, many reports and really couldn’t do anything.
We had our documents stolen years ago. My spouse’s passport was stolen. We got a note from the State Dept months later that they were looking into it. Our worry was it would be sold on the black market and used elsewhere. Nothing bad ever happened. We never reported it to the IRS.
I think most thieves aren’t also cyber thieves. That may have changed but most of the info cyber thieves want is available online. Thieves who break into homes seem to want quick cash. The police did call us months later and come and look at a wide range of valuables which had been stolen in our town. None of it belonged to us.
Wish you the best.
