Money

Middle Age Divorced Dad tells us more.

So it turns out anyone with a Canadian's name, address, date of birth and the ability to make an educated guess can get that person's credit report. Using my credit report they found out I had a line of credit. I haven't used this line of credit in over 7 years and my bank card for it was deactivated. The bank however did have my current phone number and signature. I'm not sure how they didn't think to validate either. After spending an entire day dealing with the bank they admitted that they didn't follow their procedures, that it really was their fault and that they would launch an investigation. The next day the bank fraud department called me and asked me to identify myself by answering some questions. I might have gone to far at this point. I was not the most polite. I explained that they were calling me and that they shouldn't be asking me personal questions when they haven't proven they really are the bank. The lady on the phone was clueless as to why I would be asking here to prove she was from the bank. In the end she couldn't prove she was really from the bank and I hung up. I should point out that this bank regularly tells people they will not call customers and ask for personal information. It then took me 3 hours on hold to get back in touch with a person a the fraud department. The banks "investigation" involved asking me questions from a script. Other than where was I at the time of the incident all the questions were irrelevant to the what had happened. The Bank in question is CIBC The credit bureau that leaked my credit report was Equifax Transunion, the other credit bureau, in my opinion, has far better data but uses dark patterns to fraudulently get people to signup for services they don't need.