Why we should all be concerned about the CFPB and our Data.
Let me start this off with a little history on my personal situation.
Last fall I received a letter in the mail from a credit card company I was not familiar with. It was one of those clear windowed letters that I would have normally just tossed in the trash and forgotten about. This one stood out for some reason, so I opened it up and discovered it was a form letter from a credit card company saying that my application was declined and I need to provide more information. Again, I almost dismissed it, but decided I should call the company and see what was going on. I'm glad I did.
The customer support representative said that they needed some more information so they could open the accounts. I told them I did not apply for anything. That raised a red flag with him and started the chain of events below. I completed these steps the same day that I found out about the issue.
Created an Identity Theft report with the FTC. They provided a checklist to complete that included some of the following and additional steps.
Contacted all three credit reporting agencies and "freezing" my credit. You notify one of a breach and they are required to notify the other two.
Generated Credit reports from Annual Credit Reports. I discovered on one of the rerports that someone had tried to open a cell phone account using my info!
Reached out to my bank and created a report with them.
Changed ALL of my passwords so they were unique. Personal stuff, and financial stuff. This took hours, even using Bitwarden. (Bitwarden is Awesome!)
Contacted the Social Security Administration to lock my Social Security Number.
I worked on locking everything over a weekend, and after completing all of these steps I felt pretty confident that I was safe. Since then I have been keeping a close eye on my bank accounts, and making sure that I was not seeing anything weird in my email. Personal and at work.
A couple months after the initial issue I started a new job. They had issues with validating my identity and pulling my credit report. That was to be expected. I was aware that I would need to unfreeze my SSN to allow them to validate my identity. At the time I was not able to access the website to do that, over the course of a couple days I kept trying. I called the SSA, after a 30 minute wait, someone was able to unlock my SSN and the HR department was able to validate my identity. They then immediately locked down my account. After the fact I made sure everything was back in place. At the time I felt like all the effort was worth it.
Six Months Later
I received two envelopes in the mail from an app based credit card company that specializes in helping people build credit. They do not require a "hard" credit check. Inside the letters were a debit card and a credit card that I did not apply for. I thought that they might be some sort of advertising, but after reading the letters I called the company. They confirmed that the accounts were opened, they closed them immediately, and sent me emails confirming they were closed.
This prompted me to go through the steps listed above AGAIN to file an Identity Theft Report, generate new credit reports, and scanning them to make sure there was nothing else strange going on. I also confirmed that all of the locks were in place, and they were. Since the credit card company didn't require the "Full Credit Check" the freezes I had in place did not matter. Since they did not require validating identity, the SSN lock did not matter. This is an issue with the creditor that should be resolved!
After all the work I had done, someone was still able to try and open an account in my name. If I had not been as vigilant as I am I could be in more trouble.
Why This All Matters
As individual consumers we lack the voice and power to fully protect ourselves against identity theft and predatory practices. This is where an organization like the CFPB comes into play. Cutting funding to this organization are putting us all at risk!
Reach out to your representatives and encourage them to protect funding for the CFPB!