Identity Theft and Proof of Residence

Dawn · ‎03-11-2008

There is another thread open in relation to an identity theft issue in which the service provider (Time Warner) is asking for Proof of Residence during the time period in question. They are limiting the acceptable documentation to a gas or electric bill and specifically exclude a rental agreement. I assume they are looking for evidence that the consumer did NOT live at the service address at that time.

Is this common practice when a utility service provider is establishing the validity of your ID Theft claim? If so, how can they limit the Proof of Residence to two utility service documents? Many people are in shared housing arrangements and may not have the utility service in their name, so how can they limit the Proof of Residence to just utility bills?

Is this just one more type of documentation that we all need to keep track of throughout our lives? We need multiple forms of documentation to prove where we lived at any given moment in time just in case someone opens an account in our name at an address we do not live at?

Even the FTC ID Theft Affidavit lists other acceptable documents and references them as "examples" and does not exclude other documents (such as rental agreements.)

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/affidavit.pdf

"Proof of residency during the time the disputed bill occurred, the loan was made or theother event took place (for example, a rental/lease agreement in your name, a copy of autility bill or a copy of an insurance bill)."

Message Edited by Dawn on 03-11-2008 07:27 AM

Anonymous · ‎03-11-2008

I agree with you-

However Lease agreements are easy to forge and can be hard to verify-

A utillity bill is easily verified-

Dawn · ‎03-11-2008

Timothy wrote:
I agree with you-
However Lease agreements are easy to forge and can be hard to verify-

A utillity bill is easily verified-

Well ... I guess it's a good thing that DH and I just happen to have utilities in each of our names, since they won't list both names on the accounts.

Now I have one more thing to advise my kids of as they navigate this big, bad world. Each room-mate should have one of the utlity bills listed in their own name ... assuming they have more than one utility service provider. When the kids are too broke to have either cable/satellite service and use cell phones instead of land-line phones ... having enough utility accounts to go around is a tad difficult.

Oh ... and for my kids' benefit ... who love to go with "paper-less" billing ... they will have to be sure they save those bills in electronic format (and have a proper backup) or print them and keep them for years in order to prove where they were living in each part of their travels.