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Comment by BinaryIdiot | Hacker News Reader

> In all honesty, when your info gets leaked, don't you just cancel every credit card and bank account, get a new SSN, change your drivers license number, change your phone number and a few other numbers and move on with your life?

That is an insane pain in the ass. In this day of age just changing a credit card number is a pain; now changing your phone number is a new level of pain in the ass. Not only that but it's hard to get a new SSN; I've known plenty of people who requested a new one due to their SSN leaking and unless you have proof of identity theft many of them were simply declined.

Driver license numbers you typically don't need to change however. Almost all drive license numbers are generated simply based on your name (granted this depends on the state) so most of the time you can generate someone's number, accurately, just by knowing their name or a few other details about them. They're not really used to much.

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OK so it's a pain in the ass. That's not really that bad on the scale of things.

Instead of asking a question and then flippantly responding to a well-written answer, I recommend you do some quick googling.

http://www.lifelock.com/education/identity-theft-recovery/ef...

https://www.privacyrights.org/ar/id_theft.htm

Identity theft can have far-reaching consequences and calling it a "pain in the ass," even an "insane pain in the ass," is barely scratching the surface of the experience.

edit: grammar

Give me a break. Lifelock are in the business of selling you a product to protect against "identity theft".

By very definition, they are in the business of scaring you into buying their product. They are fear mongers. Their advice is not worth 0.02.

> Identity theft can have far-reaching consequences

The one person that has replied so far that it has happened to said it resulted in bad credit for a number of years. That's it. What other "far-reaching consequences" are you talking about?

I agree that the lifelock link was not impressive, but in the second link (search for "My third topic") there are significant examples of identity theft that would have far-reaching consequence such as:

| "Victims are often scarred emotionally. They feel violated and helpless -- and very angry. I've heard people use the word "rape" to describe how they feel. "

| "A search of his SSN showed he was wanted for a crime in the Bay Area. He was transported from San Diego to San Francisco and put in jail. It took him 10 days before one of the officers believed him, took his fingerprints as he had requested all along, and realized they had the wrong person."

| "when the imposter is working under the victim's name and SSN, and the earnings show on the victim's Social Security Administration record. We learned of one such a case that had been going on for 10 years. The imposter obtained the victim's birth certificate, a public record in California. And even when the victim acquired a new SSN, the impersonator was able to obtain it shortly thereafter. Victims of employment fraud often must deal with the Internal Revenue Service because IRS records show they are under-reporting their wages."

No horse in the identity theft question, hasn't happened to me, but I did have seriously bad credit for a short while due to a cockup by my bank, exacerbated by difficulty passing identity checks due to moving house a lot. Some of the potential consequences:

* I almost ended up in a situation where I couldn't get paid or pay bills, because no bank in the country would let me open an account

* I was at risk of becoming homeless because my lease was expiring and you can't rent a flat without passing a credit check

* Even signing up for a mobile phone or home internet requires passing a credit check

So: No job, internet, or house. Pretty far-reaching!

Eh, I immigrated to the US, then later to Canada, and I experienced exactly the same thing because having no credit rating is the same as having the worst possible credit rating.

I got over it, and figured out how to move on with life.

How did you get over that? I was only able to get past those obstacles by fixing my credit history, which fortunately was relatively easy as it was a mistake by my bank.

I spent years on a "bonded credit card" with limit $1k (i.e. they held $1k of mine in case I ever defaulted on the card) and kept a healthy amount in my savings account, and always paid off my card in time, until they slowly started to trust me.

I also had to put down deposits to get phone, apartment, electricity, etc. etc.

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