People are victims of identity theft every day. There are many companies that have come together in order to help keep check on your credit reports and let you know if there has been suspicious activity on any of your credit cards along with other cards that have been opened in your name. There are also ways to take precautions to make sure this never happens to you on your own without paying credit card companies or outside companies to the work for you.
First of all, there are ways of keeping check on your credit report on a monthly basis. You can either pay a small fee to receive your credit report monthly or you can continue to dispute bad credit listed on your report in order to receive an updated report without paying. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion give the opportunity for you to get a free report once a year, but that is not good enough to keep track of your credit.
Once you receive your report and you see some activity or opened accounts that are not yours then immediately contact the three consumer reporting companies and let them know. They will put a fraud alert on your report so that no other accounts can be opened. The Equifax number is 1800-525-6285
- The Experian number is 1888-experian
- The TransUnion number is 1800-680-7289
Check the address information listed on the reports to be sure that they are yours. If not, be sure that they change it. Also check the employment history to make sure it matches yours; otherwise change it to its correct information.
The next step would be to close the accounts that are not yours. This may hurt your credit score a little but it is worth it if you continue to risk someone getting all of your information and ruining your credit. You will need to contact these accounts and keep records of things said with who you talked to so that you will have it as proof. You will also want to have things in writing as well for instance, writing a letter to the company to inform them of a fraudulent account and the need to close it. Since this has become such a problem in past years most companies will not give you a hard time and will act quickly. You will also want to make sure to get records of activity on these accounts so that you can dispute these charges.
In order to help stop the person that stole your identity you will want to report it to the police and to the Federal Trade Commission. By doing this it will also help you to prevent the fraudulent information to continue on your credit report, it will extend the fraud alert, and make sure that the fraudulent information will not reappear later.
