This was around... Oh... 8-9 years ago and I'm still trying to figure it out. It's honestly bothered me since then. I just really want to know how they connected us. I'm not mad they did, I just want to know how.
We never had an insurance policy together or anything else like that either.
It could have come from the other side. If they listed your address for something (because she didn't want to list their own, or for any number of reasons), they could possibly determine that you lived together from that. Or some database got mixed up and used some shipping address for something they ordered to your residence as a home address. Having them associate you with them isn't all that weird.
What's weird is that they get this information from random sources and use it for verification without verifying it's actually accurate first. That's just bonkers.
Did you list them as the beneficiary of any retirement accounts or insurance policies, or maybe as an emergency contact somewhere that reports to credit bureaus?
Beneficiary, certainly not, I was in college, broke as fuck, and living on student loans, didn't have any sort of assets to speak of (besides a $900 car), no retirement accounts or insurance policies (besides the minimum liability insurance required by the state).
Yikes. Where did they get that from? I wonder if they also collected tons of info from FaceBook like it seems everyone else has.