A letter arrives about a debt you don't remember, from a company you've never dealt with, for an account you never opened.For a growing number of people, that notice is how they first learn someone used their identity.Complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about attempts to collect a debt not owed rose about 115% above their prior two-year average in 2025, and many of those consumers reported balances they didn't recognize and suspected identity theft.Before you panic or pay, it helps to understand why these letters show up and what rights you have.WHY LAST YEAR'S BREACH IS THIS YEAR'S IDENTITY FRAUDA collection letter for a debt you do not recognize can be the first sign that someone used your identity.
(John Carl D'Annibale /Albany Times Union via Getty Images)Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportWhy debt collectors contact you about a debt you do not oweWhen a charged-off account is sold to a collection agency, the agency receives the original creditor's application file, including whatever identifiers were used to open it.That contact information is often 90 to 180 days out of date by the time the account changes hands.HOW SCAMMERS BUILD A PROFILE ON YOU USING DATA BROKERSBefore the first call, the agency runs skip tracing: matching a name, Social Security number (SSN) and past addresses against public records, postal change-of-address data, property and utility records and data-broker files to find the current person behind the account.
At bulk volume, each lookup costs the agency pennies.The agency then contacts you directly, by phone or mail, whether or not you have looked at your credit file.The account behind the notice may have been opened with your information pulled from breaches and resold, then approved by an automated check that matched the data to an existing file without confirming that the applicant was you.Opening a new account is the leading form of attempted identity misuse reported to the Identity Theft Resource Center (...