Because we weren't already full up on Cares and Woe?

In the mail today...addressed to me using my Very Formal non-alias name...a letter from the Educational Credit Management Corp. Informing me that I was--maybe--among the 3.3 million individuals who may or may not have had personal information stored in a portable storage device that was stolen out of a guarded safe way back in February. But, in an effort to make up for their (my) misfortunes, they were offering me a one year FREE trial membership to a credit monitoring service.

Just a tad bit too dodgy for my taste and the letter was tossed.

Imagine my surprise later this evening to find out they were legit. And somewhere out there, a Not So Nice person has--maybe--access to my social security number, my address and my date of birth: the sacred trinity of credit card applications. The shiny side? Our credit score is so far south that even a Not So Nice person posing as me with all the above information would--hopefully--be denied a credit card. But they're more than welcome to the student loan.

So, given the fraud issues we've already dealt with in the last six months, I dug through the trash--eww...diapers and chicken innards--retrieved the letter and took advantage of the complementary membership. And set an alert on my calendar for this date next year to remind me to cancel.