Maybe if it goes unnoticed for several years... But even then indefinitely sounds like a stretch.

I've personally had my identity stolen last year and they got a car loan, insurance, and bought a couple iPhones and lines with two different providers. It happened in the month I was closing on my house and getting a mortgage. Yeah it was a bit of a pain but some phone calls, a police report, notarization, and snail mail later and it is off my record and my credit score went right back over 800. Also I was still able to get the mortgage even with it going on.

You can also lock your credit down with the main agencies. I do this during normal times and only unlock when I know I need to secure a new line (such as a car loan or moving)

We don’t chnage credit cards hardly ever. But would need to do it for that too

You better believe I have my credit reports locked now and for anybody reading this I recommend you go do this now if you haven't already (it is free and easy).

I've had to unlock them a few times and I can unlock all three in under 5 minutes.

I also have a fraud alert on my reports now which was only slightly inconvenient when getting utilities because I had to go in person to verify myself (utility companies don't report to credit agencies afaik but they do some sort of identity check through them).

I’ll also add that it’s more convenient than I expected - the three credit bureaus all let you unlock your file temporarily up until a specified date, after which it will re-lock without you having to log back in.

It sounds like you cleaned up one event, but your identity is still owned right, so can’t they buy stuff in your name again? Or how does that work?

I have freezes and fraud alerts on my credit reports so in reality they can't really do anything (unless they also had access to my email, physical address, phone, and the PIN I used to freeze them)

Mostly they were found and went to jail for what they were doing. I guess they could try again if they wanted. I have my credit frozen now though.

Identity theft happened to me once from another person with my same name using my identity to run up credit. It's not that hard to fix, it just takes fighting bureaucracy. They got my info from some lender somehow getting my data and giving it to them. Someone's email spool getting compromised and that leading to identity theft is such a smaller concern compared to all these data warehouses just leaking your data.