I have not been hacked but I have had a great deal of identity theft. Whole buncha' times on CC's, to the point where two card issuers have flagged my accounts as high risk, and password protected them. One day I actually got a call from a card issuer asking me if I was me because the woman I was speaking with also had 'me' on the other line. We have also had our federal tax returns filed by others.... twice. The first one of those was an interesting experience, starting off with us getting a refund that was much, MUCH larger than what we should have received. That was the first part of the fraud, the second part was supposed to be the IRS electronically sending the money to "our" account that the person(s) doing the defrauding had set up to receive those monies.... but the IRS sent us a check instead. That one also had a lot of steps required to prove fraud as well as cleaning it up, starting with filing a police report and filing a criminal complaint with the fed. gov't, DOJ if I remember right. Not all that painful but it did take a long time, around 9 months as I remember. The second income tax fraudulent filing went much faster which I guess is good news.
I have not had a credit card expire in years now; they have always been subject to fraudulent use, cancelled and replaced with new ones (via next- day delivery too) long before they even approach the expiration date.
And for whatever crazy reason, or perhaps completely by coincidence, a lot of the time the large, fraudulent sale that triggers the call from the card issuer and the ensuing little circus that follows it has been at an Apple store. The usual method seems to be two small purchases (to prove the card numbers are legitimate and active) and then one large one (that is often the Apple purchase). What trips the CC issuer to the fact that it is fraud is that the purchases are almost always a great distance apart physically, as in different states.
And before someone asks, nope, I have never, ever had any of my cards leave my possession, have never had any of the numbers 'get loose' (directly from me, obviously the numbers are being booted from merchants or perhaps through data leaks) and am not doing anything at all that I can think of to cause or contribute to this continuing theft.
Ah, good times.
Brian
Fu&#ing hackers.
This time I had to cancel one credit card, and my checking account.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR