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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

> My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years

Something I've been curious about recently that maybe you (or others) can help clarify:

What do people count as having their "identity stolen"?

I've had probably three times where I've had fraudulent purchases made after someone stole our credit card info. Does that count?

In my mind, identity theft is more people taking out loans in your name or something like that.

Which is it?

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I agree...simple credit card fraud shouldn't be counted as identity theft. There are plenty of ways for people to get your card numbers and your basic information that won't allow them to go on to more serious impersonation fraud. In my case I had someone file a tax return in my name and try to open credit accounts at a later date. The incidents were probably all unrelated but I had to put a 7 year fraud alert on my 3 major credit bureau accounts which required a police report, a report to the FTC, and letters to the credit bureaus.

Yea that sounds like a huge pain. Thanks for clarifying.

Does anyone know if there's a way to basically indicate, "I'm not planning to buy anything on credit" and freeze your credit the way you would freeze a bank account?

Then again, I don't have a great credit score to begin with, so maybe that is enough to keep people from being interested in impersonating me...

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...

Thanks!

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