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In Search of Protection: A Post-Theft Scramble For Help
I'm not the type of person to get too paranoid about being victimized. We see it on the news everyday about how people are being stolen from, mugged, cyber criminalized, and down right taken to the cleaners. And for some reason I've always been somewhat numb to the reality that it could happen to me at any time and on any day. Even with two beautiful children and a loving husband I think I've always had that, "it won't happen to me," voice in the back of my head causing me to look the other way when maybe I should have been researching ways to protect myself.
I live what I feel is a pretty standard and common life, breakfast in the morning and feeding the kids before school, I work part time at a preschool, try to do yoga 2-3 times per week, cook dinners, go out with friends, shop, enjoy alone time with my husband, and everything else you'd expect from a young mom trying to live a great life and give her kids everything they deserve. I live in a great community, gated, and always feel comfortable with my kids playing in the neighborhood. Everything was great until a week ago when it suddenly became not OK.
After getting everyone off to school and work I hopped in my car and noticed some trash along the side of the house. When I got out to take a closure look I found that someone had gotten into our garbage cans, tore open the bags, and rummaged through all of our discarded mail. I thought it was really weird and didn't understand the significance until I got to work and told my friend, Tanya, she didn't hesitate to put me into panic mode telling me about how criminals piece together information about you only to steal your identity for their own benefit at your expense.
Getting My Identity In Check I immediately started doing my research on what to do when your mail is stolen only to escalate my paranoia about what has happened and how it can affect me and my family. Criminals taking out loans in your name, buying merchandise with your credit card numbers, filing for tax returns against your social security number... the list goes on and on. Now I'm totally freaked!!
I started looking for identity theft protection companies as a lot of the information I'd found said that it's a good way to thwart off criminals if they do try and steal your identity and it can also help you put your life back together is some yahoo buys a $180,000 RV in your name and goes on a national crime tour. I ended up finding the Identity Theft Protection Bureau and really trusted their advice and customer feedback on their LifeLock review. After looking at several of the companies they had helpful information on I found LifeLock to be the most reliable and seemed to have the best feedback from customers. Now I'm just hoping that whoever has all our mail is stopped in their tracks when they try to use whatever they found.
The Paranoia Spreads to My Digital Life I'm currently in the process of researching how this theft can affect me in the digital world and will add my findings here when I'm done hyperventilating ;) . To Be Continued.