How to Stop Creditors From Finding Your Assets
Debt collection agencies use every technique they can to collect judgment. They’re like The Terminator: they have one goal, and that is to collect. They will use every technique allowable by law (and sometimes, ones that are illegal), top con, trick, coerce, and cajole you to giving up personal information. While you should not ever talk to a bill collector (sure, go ahead and call once, to see if they are being reasonable. Trust me, they’re not going to be). But in order to really deal with debt collectors you’ll need to know how they operate. Here’s the top ten tricks they use to get you to divulge your security number, which they will use to find hidden assets and report you to the credit bureaus.
- Trick#1: They call you and ask you to “confirm” your Social Security number.
- Trick #2: They send you a form, offering a settlement, or reasonable terms, or asking you to provide some innocent info. There will be a blank space for your name, address, birth date and Social Security number. Their hope is that maybe your spouse or other relative will fill it in, thinking it’s legitimate.
- Trick #3: They use a government database called PACER to pull your public records. If you’ve put your social security number on anything public (deed, mortgage note, marriage license, arrest records, bankruptcies etc.), they will find it. All they need is to know your address (they will pull credit reports to do this), and they have access to all of your public records.
Your social security number isn’t as safe as you thought is was. You can take proactive steps for the future (like never putting your social on public records), but you can’t hide your current assets from a creditor. They will find them.
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