Possible identity theft?
March 24, 2009 5:52 PM   Subscribe

My application to a short course at a university never arrived. Are there any steps I should take to avoid possible identity theft?

After a month of waiting around with no response from the university, I called them; they never received my application, though I had sent it by mail more than a month ago. Since the university's admissions dept. is undergoing a "massive restructuring," it's quite possible that it got lost somewhere in the building.

But: my application included a photocopy of my birth certificate, my social insurance number, and a cheque for the registration fee. I'm a little worried about what has happened to this stuff. Idiotically, I neither tracked my application in the mail nor wrote down which cheque I had sent to the admissions office (so, I can't put a stop on it).

Is there anything I can do to prevent possible identity theft? Or am I just going to have to cross my fingers and hope that my stuff has fallen into the wrong hands? So far, nothing strange has happened with my bank account and there is no indication that my info is being used in any nefarious way.

Thanks in advance.
posted by anonymous to Grab Bag (1 answer total)
 
You can probably call your bank and find out if there are any checks that haven't been cashed; if there is one, that might indicate that the envelope is still intact. And, though this may be the least of your worries, they will allow you to put a stop payment on the check.

If the check has been cashed, but the university doesn't have it, the bank can also help you close that account and open a new one, in case your account number is compromised.

I don't know much about what to do regarding the rest of it, but there's also always a chance the mail is just slow. I've (sadly enough) had things take longer than that to arrive.
posted by dizziest at 8:12 PM on March 24, 2009


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