My identity was stolen by a store cashier in 1999. That old data has been reused in many different ways from 1999 to 2007, including opening a commercial lease for a store in my name–something that doesn’t even show up on a credit report. I only found out about it when a lawyer pulled my credit file to try to collect past rent on the store from me and when he phoned me I informed him this was yet another incident of identity theft that I had not even known about. THe store was leased for nearly two years at the time I found out.

The police have informed me that when your data is stolen sometimes it is put onto lists that are then sold to criminals. Therefore new identity thiefs can start new action using your data at any time in the future. Wonderful. Not.