On 1/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/29/06, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
Can someone really "run up a big bill and
leave you with it"? I
thought your authorization was needed in order to enter into a loan.
But they got 'your' authorization.
They got the authorization of someone pretending to be you. If that's
what you mean by "your", then yeah. Granted, it might be hard to get
it off your credit report, as that might ultimately require
*initiating* a lawsuit, but Fred seemed to imply that the "victim"
(that is, the person whose identity was being used) was actually
responsible for the loan just because someone used their personal
information without their authorization!
IOW, I thought
that while the credit reporting agencies might report
the outstanding loan, no court would actually attempt to enforce such
a loan.
Straightening out your credit rating can occassionally be difficult,
but the vast majority of the time it's actually quite straightforward.
Actually getting a bank to "forgive" a debt on the other hand...
The challenge can be convincing them it wasn't you... once you've done
that it's just a matter of getting people to apply some common sense.
In the few cases I've personally witnessed where there were false
items on someone's credit report, the creditors have been fairly easy
to convince to remove the information from the report. One thing that
does help is contacting the creditor first, because the credit
reporting agency is pretty much always going to believe them (and the
law largely backs them up in this position). "Identity theft" can
definitely be a nightmare in the case of a stubborn creditor or a
really well executed attack, but I've always assumed the person who
actually loses the money is the creditor, barring some sort of
negligence on the part of the "victim".
Anthony