[quote=no_such_reality]Same way I know the postal carrier isn’t stealing my stuff….Any of the numerous banks didn’t steal my stuff.[/quote]
I have actually had these happen..
A postal carrier did steal stuff checks I sent, tried to bleach out the ‘to’ without changing the amount so it would be harder for me to detect. I used archival permanent ink when writing the check, so he was SOL. This guy was eventually busted.
I have had a bank ‘misplace’ a deposit of over $2000. It was my burden of proof that I did do the deposit. I had kept all of my transaction receipts, which surprised the bank.. and helped them track it.. the money had been, a-hem, deposited into the wrong account. Kind of hard to do since it was done @ the bank’s ATM which records the account that the deposit is to.
A brokerage had ‘mis-placed’ a large block of stock I owned. They ‘mis-placed’ it in the process of merging two different systems (on broker bought out another). This stock had a very large short position where the shorts were ‘trapped’. I had gone round-and-round with the support and gotten no-where.. same BS, no action. I ended up tracking down and calling their Corporate Legal Department. Gave them succinct accurate info. They had it resolved in about 24 hours. (I suspect that someone, a broker, had ‘moved’ the stock out of my account to cover their ass while the systems were being merged.).
These problems do happen, and I have found that being prepared helps as well as finding that a good old ounce of prevention is better than one pound of cure.. A lot of those ‘credit protection’ companies are almost worthless and clearing identity theft is quite painful.
PS: A secret to shredding personal/sensitive info, is to shred some stuff that is not important too.. and mix it all together. If anyone is crazy enough to try to piece together shredded stuff.. shredding useless paper and junkmail(w/o personal info) ends up frustrating dumpster divers who might spend a lot of effort and reassemble something completely worthless to them.
