This may or may not eventually find its way to the blog.

I had a credit fraud scare this week. On Wednesday, I received a call from a company that does affiliate marketing for web sites. "Did you apply with us?" the company representative asked.

"Maybe," I said. "I've applied to a couple places lately. What sort of affiliates do you offer?"

We talked about the program for a bit, and it quickly became apparent that I hadn't applied.

"Hm," said the represenative. "We've got an application with your name and your phone number, etc. Somebody probably harvested this from a public WHOIS database or other information publicly available on the internet. This happens all the time. These people sign up for affiliate programs, and then before the checks are mailed, they switch to a different address. We'll take you out of the system."

I should have asked why somebody would do this, but my mind was elsewhere. I mentioned this incident in passing yesterday in the daily links, and Kevin Mulligan called me on it. "Dude, check your credit report!" he said.

And so I did.

Nothing is amiss. Thank goodness.

I'm getting more frightened of identity theft all the time. For Christmas, I asked for a shredder from my parents-in-law. A shredder! How geeky is that? I've been checking my credit report once every four months, taking advantage of the free annual reports from each of the three agencies. So far, so good, but still: I worry.

Glad everything is OK. I check my credit reports the same way, every 4 months as opposed to all on the same month. And we check my DH's on an alternate schedule as well.

And about the shredder being geeky.... uh I registered for one for my wedding 7 years ago LOL How's that for being geeky and practical at the same time.