Decimal Diary: Data leaks and credit reports

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

Dear Decimal Diary,

My personal details were leaked in two recent data breaches affecting Qantas and Vietnam Airlines. Another batch of little pieces that might one day be reassembled into a pretend me, so they say.

I've read that it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on your official credit report in case someone steals your identity and applies for loans in your name. So today I tried out Johnny's idea of 'be a better human' time and did something I've been putting off for ages – I accessed my credit reports.

In Australia, I learned that there are three companies dealing with identity and credit services:¹

• Experian,
• illion, and
• Equifax.

Finding the stuff to create an account

First, I had to register for an account with each service. This meant providing things like drivers licence, passport, and Medicare details.² In my personal system, this kind of thing is saved under 12.16 Medicare & government and 33.11 Identity.³ No worries.

Saving the stuff they sent me

After the accounts were set up, requesting the credit reports was straightforward. I can get them sent every 3 months for free if I want (I've set a new reminder to do this). I've saved them in my filesystem in 11.26 Credit rating, labelled by year-month-day so they sort.

Other helpful cameos

Other Decimalised things involved in this 'P3' task include:

• The item that reminded me that I actually really want to do this was saved in my 11 Money & tax category in Things.
• New logins for the credit report companies were saved in my 11 Money & tax category in 1Password.
• Emails from the companies were filed in my 11.26 Credit rating folder in Gmail.

This boring life admin task was made a bit less ominous thanks to my system, and I actually bloody did it.⁴

From,
Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.