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With so many transactions being done online, how would Face ID or fingerprints even work?

I understand if you can’t answer this for confidentiality reasons! how many of your clients are in abusive situations where disclosing an affair would be dangerous vs. not?

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Hi Novel-Baseball3764. I can’t speak for other therapists and in my work, infidelity is not minimized. The pain of finding out someone cheated on you can be as deep as finding out a loved one died.

Yup. Agreed on all counts.

Dwight is absolutely correct!!! (Fun fact: Rainn Wilson and I went to the same high school. Not at the same time.)

My favorite TV/movie quote - or at least the one I repeat the most often - is from The Simpsons movie, when Bart says, "this is the worst day of my life" and Homer says, "the worst day of your life so far."

With the amount of places you have to enter your full SS# and the amount of people it passes through basically everyone is compromised. Once it’s out there there’s nothing you can so about it but hope you aren’t randomly selected by a thief. Not like you can request a new one.

Hi Bgoug. Thank you for your question. As a therapist I am able to remove my personal feelings from situation in order to best help my clients. This is how I am able to offer a nonjudgmental space and deeply discuss different views to help clients process ripple effects of actions. I can share that most of my clients are remorseful. Many are actively working on how to disclose the affair or fully disclose details. In some situations, it is not safe to disclose affair.

Identity theft is not a joke Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!

What's your favorite movie/tv quote?

Hi

Do you think affair therapists can minimise the relationship between the AP and unfaithful one? As in, sometime some people just meet and fall in love or have a better connection?

Freeze your credit! I was really surprised at how easy it was to do that. It took me 15 minutes to set up accounts and freeze my credit with all three bureaus.

And, if possible, report your stolen wallet to the police. They probably aren't going to do anything about it, but having that report was vital when I was dealing with debt collectors and investigators. I basically had to mount a court case in defense of my innocence over and over again. The police report about the stolen wallet showed how it all had started.

In your opinion, if my wallet goes missing like yours, what is the absolute first step I should make ASAP?

Do you ever feel an obligation to tell the spouse/partner of the woman cheating? This is yucky :(

One thing I didn't mention in my original stories: Identity theft insurance. I got tons of emails and tweets asking me about it and whether I'd left it out intentionally. Honestly, I had never used LifeLock or anything like that, and I wasn't really sure what they did. So I decided to look into it.

I published a story today about whether ID theft protection is worth it. The tl;dr version: For me, yes. For you? Maybe.

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Here's what happened when I tried to dispute that stuff in September:

-I submitted disputes to TransUnion and got an error message about a technical issue where I might not be notified after my dispute was resolved.

-I tried to submit disputes to Experian and got an error message that said identity theft disputes could not be processed online.

-I was able to submit my disputes to Equifax, and received a notice that the disputes had been resolved, but every time I tried to click the PDF with the results, I got an error message.

Great question! If your child is under 16, you can ask the three major credit bureaus to place a freeze on their credit. (It's a lot of paperwork, which the credit bureaus love, apparently.) Make sure any documents with personal information, like their birth certificate and Social Security card, are stored safely in your home. Wipe phones and computers before trashing, selling or donating them.

And be thoughtful about the information you share about your child. Places LOVE asking me what my baby's Social Security number is. Does his pediatrician really need to know that? Does his daycare? I don't think so. I leave that field blank wherever possible.

What kind of brain cancer do you think Donald Trump has? He seems mentally impaired in many ways. Thanks!

Yes, but only at the point that the entire system is worthless. Eventually, you'll probably be able to google Social Security numbers just like you can search for people's phone numbers and home addresses right now. If you think your SSN doesn't exist somewhere on the dark web (and, increasingly, with "light web" data brokers), you are wrong.

So yes, at some point, we will need to move beyond static data like SSNs and the tiny photo on your driver's license. I think we'll see more financial and government institutions adding the option for things like Face ID or fingerprints for identification. That tech isn't perfect either, but it's a lot better than a 9-digit number.

Oh, you absolutely have to follow up. I did. Multiple times. I called the station repeatedly and asked for the name of the detective assigned to my case, and I regularly left him voicemails and emailed him. He was not particularly helpful. The only reason I know who stole my identity is because they were caught doing other crimes.

Really, the benefit of reporting identity theft to the police is having that police report as evidence when debt collectors start calling you. It is statistically extremely unlikely that police will do much to help you.

Thank you very much. I wish you well.

Hi Naughtychick9999. I do have several clients whom are in this situation. I do not have a blanket statement as every situation can be very different but I can say that they too deserve support.

My wallet was stolen in late November. I first realized something was going on in mid-January, when I got a bunch of mail congratulating me on my new checking and savings accounts with Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and getting alerts from my free credit monitoring that there were new inquiries on my report.

In retrospect, I should have frozen my credit when my wallet was stolen. Really, I should have left it frozen all the time (and so should you, and everyone else reading this). But I had no idea what people could do with a wallet that only had my driver's license, a couple credit cards and some gift cards and a couple bucks in cash in it. I didn't realize how vulnerable I was, and that even though I'm financially conscientious and tech-savvy, anyone can be a victim with the way our systems exist now.

If I had frozen my credit before the thieves got their hands on my wallet, they probably would have had trouble opening those checking accounts. Because I used free credit monitoring and acted quickly once I realized what was going on, they weren't able to take out any credit cards in my name (though they sure tried! a lot!). They still would have been able to use my driver’s license to steal the car and various other crimes, because California does not flag licenses that have been reported stolen to banks or law enforcement. There was no single thing I personally could have done to stop everything they did.

*edit - typo