information about creating an ID.me account

Hi Terry, I’ve heard you recommending this again lately and want to share some information. My husband and I were victims of Illinois unemployment fraud attempts in 2020 and 2021, and received letters from the IRS recommending that we file this year with an IP-PIN. The ID.me process was such a failure that we filed in February without the PIN. We had trouble with acceptance of our photo for facial recognition and our legitimate phone numbers. Applicants are not alerted before starting that you can’t create an account if you have a credit freeze in place (which many ID theft victims do)! So you must temporarily unfreeze your credit. Then you increase your online vulnerability if you agree to upload additional documents such as birth certificate, Social Security card, etc. (which we did). It took 3 hours with multiple attempts to try to create our account. Finally we opted to join a waiting room to participate in a video conference call. We never received the email invitation to the call. Weeks later we received an email suggesting that we create an ID.me account. I don’t know if it might be more successful to apply using a mobile phone rather than a computer. We did it on our laptop because of the larger screen and keyboard. Thank you for the opportunity to share–I hope this information will be helpful to you and your audiences.