<prompt> Human: Hi everyone. I frequent rpersonalfinance but am using a throwaway for obvious reasons.Several days ago, I received an email from Verizon that an order had been placed for a new line of service. It had my name, address that Ive only lived at for 4 months, cell phone number just for billing info, not being used for new line, and of course my email address. The only thing that was not mine was the card being used. Based on type and last 4 digits it showed The weird thing about it was that A it was in Spanish, and B the phone in the order was literally a decade old flip phone. Im assuming the person chose the bring your own device option. Upon checking my credit report, sure enough there was a hard credit inquiry from Verizon that same day.So I immediately took action and did everything more as prescribed in the newest wiki entry: MAJOR props to udequeued on this. Since it was a hard credit inquiry, I assumed that someone had the ol ssn. I filed a fraud complaint with Verizon, the FCC, did a police report, froze my credit, opt-outs, etc etc. Im still rather shaken up about it and cant really eat that much; The last part of the wiki is easier said than done.So now-- Im trying to figure out how this info was compromised, or if it even was. Assuming my ssn was used, the only places that could possibly have the combination of all the above info plus ssn would be my employer, a hospital clinic had an accident right after I moved, and possibly my dentist? I cant recall if I gave it to them I never throw away sensitive documents without shredding. I have no existing accounts of my own with Verizon that could have been leveraged. I dont fall for phishing, I use 2-factor auth and token logins where available, I set account alerts for all important accounts, and use unique passwords. I preach this for a living, so its another reason Im distressed that this happened Nothing seems out of the ordinary. So short of some physical breach in some place I mentioned above, I dont know how it could have happened.The other possibility I wondered is if my ssn was compromised at all? Does Verizon even needs an ssn to do a credit check for online order? Can hard credit inquiries be done with nameaddressphone and no ssn? Does the existence of a credit inquiry on a report mean that it was just initiated, or does it mean it was approved? Verizon confirmed that the order was done online. Out of curiosity, I opened up a new browser and tried to do a similar dummy order with the same plan. Upon trying to checkout, the Billing Credit section only asked for name, address, phone number, but NO snn. The rest of the fields to complete in the order which I couldnt see because I wasnt giving it a valid address didnt strike me as things that would later ask for an ssn.. Shipping, Choose a number, Payment If all they needed was nameaddressnumberemail, then I can at least come up with theories of how it happened. USPS change of address confirmation sent to old address and it had my new address and someone opened it? Previous apartment was a 4-bedroom placeVery sorry if this isnt quite PF caliber and maybe even turning into a rant, but I was hoping that someone may offer any insight into this situation. Thanks in advance!  <response>: Same thing happened to me a month agi. Verizon account opened in my name with all my info correct. Only active for one day. Clearly someone checking out if they info they got on me was accurate. I am usually pretty good about not giving out my info to doctors and what not.I remembered that in February, Anthem admitted to a huge data breach and offered 2 years of identity fraud monitoring at no cost 2 years from the date of requesting it. If you have used anthem at any point in the last 10 years, assume its that. Hell, you should try and sign up for it even if you didnt ever have anthem. There didnt seem to be any cross checking involved. 