So I come home today and there’s mail from Visa. My monthly bill? No. A new card. Well, I guess mine’s expired. Wait, there are two cards here. One in my name, and one in the name of some man I’ve never heard of.

Hmm. Call Visa, they access my account and assure me I’ve requested a new card (no) and added an extra authorized cardholder to my account (um, NO!!!). It takes a long time to convince them that hey, maybe someone’s doing something they shouldn’t be doing here. After a total of half an hour of holding and convincing two different employees that I don’t know this man with the strange name, they cancel my account and re-issue.

They also advise me to call Equifax to warn them that my identity has been stolen. They will flag my name and for the next five years, whenever they receive a request for credit in my name, they’ll call and check. A friend of mine to whom this happened told me that after his name was flagged, Equifax was calling several times a day, that is every time the fraudulent party tried to use his identity to apply for credit.

What’s creepy about this story is that I received the card at my place. Was this person planning on thieving my mailbox? What’s also creepy is how common this seems to be.

Things like these get to me. I know that’s obvious, but I mean, isn’t it easier to just get a job than to go to the trouble of coming up with plots like these (not to mention the risk involved), and preying on people?

Still, it could have been worse. There could have been charges made to the account. On some level I do consider myself lucky.