My home address has been used by someone to get sim only phone contracts

[cramptramp]

I received 4 letters to my home today addressed to someone I’d never heard of. They were from a mobile phone provider so I opened them. All 4 were opening a sim only phone contract for 4 different numbers. I contacted the phone company who said they’d passed it to their fraud dept who have up to 10 days to get back to me. I’ve checked my credit report and there is nothing new on it. I’m really worried about this. Does anyone have any advice?

Do you live with anyone OP?

is it possible someone in your street made a typo? You could ask on FB groups.

was your name on the letter? If so check all your bank accounts.

edit: just seen it wasn’t your name. I would refer to the first two points I made. My first thought is someone’s put in the wrong house number.

Thanks for replying. Yes I live with my OH. We live in a very small street and know everyone in it, there is no one with that name here.

I’ve had this. I think it’s an attempt at identity theft or at least establishing that they lived at my address. . I kept letting the company concerned know and it stopped after a couple of weeks and there was no trouble of any sort afterwards.

Same here. We returned all letters with the note "Not known at this address. We believe this name to be bogus" on the envelope.

Stopped after a few weeks and we never heard anything more or had any fallout.

Unfortunately in this case rather than an attempt at identity theft like the person above my first thought is this may have something to do with you other half having a secret phone.

the fraud team should throw light on what’s happened so I wouldn’t accuse anyone before then. Keep hold of the letters for now incase the fraud team wish to see them, rather then returning them as another person has done.

Good shout but my OH works in IT and wouldn’t be daft enough to use our address to open numerous sim accounts.

Unfortunately my dad works in IT/ as a software manager at a company and did something similar as presumably he didn’t realise some phone companies still send paper letters. A lot are just email only. It might not be him and I’m sure the phone company will let you know what’s going on/ if someone abroad or a bank account registered to someone else is doing it.

Most likely burner phones for something illegal and they've picked an address at random

if I was going to get a burner phone or have an affair, I’d just buy a SIM card from a shop, you don’t need to register the number to use it.

This is only the case for PAYG which does not last long if you wish to use the internet/whatsapp. Any contract has to have name address bank info.

This sounds like an attempt at identity theft to me. This topic was covered on Radio 4 You and Yours yesterday. They covered a few risks such as mobile phone theft now being not for the handset but for the access to your accounts etc, hence handsets now apparently being snatched from people's hands whilst being used.

The identity theft story they ran went something like this. Some fraudsters rang up EDF, the victim's energy supplier, knowing only his name and email. EDF leaked his phone number which enabled them to do a SIM swap and from there raid his bank accounts.

Your thing sounds different but I'd be wary.

Edited for clarity.