W2 Never Showed Up

[imschur]

So I never got my W2 in the mail this year. My concern is not with my taxes cuz I downloaded a copy. My REAL concern is that it was stolen. We have A LOT of issue with mail in my neighborhood.

I fear someone is now in possession of all the info needed to establish credit in my name.

Anyone know what do do about this?

[Dusty44]

There are general things to do.  It has been a long time and I only vaguely remember anything.

Contact the three primary credit bureaus and file a warning.  Hopefully the people there or the websites will help walk you through all this.  You can freeze new credit.  It may or may not cost to do this.

Do it right away.  If there is identity theft,  it will usually be done quickly.  Immediately or within a few weeks or months.  The W2 should have been mailed by Jan 31,  may have been a delay to mid-Feb this year (?) but plenty of time for crooks to set up whatever they wanted.

Get a Post Office box.  It may not be possible to get one in your town to have mail delivered to instead of the mail box at your front door,  or maybe that is for mail delivered to both depending on the address on the mail.  Get your Post Office box in a different town that is convenient or get one at a mail center  (MailBoxes'R'Us ??).  Change all critical mailings to the Post Office box address.  Use a slightly different name for the PO Box:  use different initials or something.  Like:  Mr A B Jones instead of Allan B Jones.  Or get wild and use the name of one of your cats for mail being delivered to your house:  Mr Felis Meow.  (???).  The PO Box is much more secure for mail that matters.  Magazine subscriptions and junk mail will be fine arriving directly.  It is gun parts and tax documents and things like that W2 that need the better security of a PO Box.  If a house address is required,  ask for all mail to require a signature or arrange for your pickup wherever with your picture ID.

I read casual articles in places like Yahoo! News and that is the source of these ideas.  There must be web sites dealing with Identity Theft to look at for more and probably better information.