Comment by runjake
YMMV, but it took me 15 minutes start to finish to freeze my credit with the 3 bureaus using the following instructions.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre...
YMMV, but it took me 15 minutes start to finish to freeze my credit with the 3 bureaus using the following instructions.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre...
> There are an estimated 10 million Americans living overseas
Curious how you found this number, have a source?
This made me pretty curious, but I couldn't find any official numbers. The closest 'official' numbers that I could find are from the Federal Voting Assistance Program [0] and that lists 4.4 million people, but only 2.8 million of those being adults.
[0] https://www.fvap.gov/info/interactive-data-center/overseas
Strange that someone down-voted you, as this is a fair question.
> Curious how you found this number, have a source?
I don't have the source handy but have seen the estimated 10 million figure cited repeatedly. But maybe it is about a million too high, as the US Department of State estimates nine million in this 2020 publication: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/travel/CA-By-the-Number...
This Wikipedia page has a lot more info for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_Sta...
Using FVAP stats to me seems problematic, because just like the general population, many US citizens do not bother registering to vote (though they do acknowledge this on the page you linked to and try to control for it).
State likely have a more accurate estimate from knowing how many passport renewals originate from overseas addresses. I am sure some Americans renew or replace their passports while merely travelling overseas, but I cannot imagine this is a routine practice.
Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to mitigate identity theft. Someone leveraging the recent National Public Data breach opened a checking and savings account using my identity (no credit checks are performed in doing so) then committed wire fraud using accounts.
Banks use various other services such as Early Warning. Still, it's absurd the lengths we need to go to for any level of assurance against fraud.
YMMV indeed.
Since moving overseas 15 years ago, I tried numerous times and it simply is not possible. All the forms require a U.S. mailing address to register. Same for online access to your Social Security account.
There are an estimated 10 million Americans living overseas. Taken together, we are the equivalent of the 11th largest state. All of us completely blind to what is happening with our credit record and Social Security account.
At this point I think the only way this gets fixed is massive fraud/exploitation by organized crime, so these organizations finally address the problem.