I discussed ucourts a few days ago (click here for the post) with respect to verifying your and your child’s social security number (SSN) and running criminal checks on those who they come into contact with.
As I stated then, I used ucourts myself and verified the SSNs of several family members. Unfortunately, one member had someone else’s name on their SSN record.
Currently, I’m not certain if the apparent breach was simply a clerical error (such as the human resources clerk typing in the wrong SSN) or something more nefarious. Nevertheless, Alberto Toledo of Wenatchee is listed as having used or using the number.
The good news is that, thus far, it doesn’t appear that he has established any credit on the SSN (at least he hasn’t negatively impacted the credit report*).
Finally, if you do find fraud on your report, you may want to consider the 7 year freeze, which requires a police report. More information on the other steps you will need to take can also be found at:Utah Attourney General’s IRIS Program
UCourts.com - Identity Theft Basics
UPDATE: Some of the Experian information I had may not have been as good as I thought. Apparently the credit is not frozen and those issuing you (of the ID thief) a line of credits simply have the option of contacting you but do NOT have to. In other words, if they care more about the sale than your ID, they will ignore the alert and give the thief the credit. As such I have pulled the information from this post.
*If someone uses your SSN (but NOT your name) to establish credit, credit bureaus create a subfile for the different name which is NOT available to you (even on your free credit reports - only banks/other institutions can see the sub files) - see page 3 of the link. As a result you may check your reports but be totally unaware of the other line of credit that has been established unless you see your score go down or are unexpectedly rejected for a loan. Yikes.
