4 Must Do Steps After an Identity Theft

It's a beautiful day. You and your friend decide to go for hike. You pull into the trail head parking area and start the process of getting ready to hike. You brought your young child along, so it takes some time to get your stuff together. After 5 - 10 minutes of wrestling with your equipment and your child's equipment, you start your hike. When you return an hour later, you find your car window broken and your wallet stolen. You thought you had it with you, but you were so busy getting your child and you organized, you forgot to bring it along. What a sickening feeling. Your money and identity were stolen.

The above scenario happened to my daughter. The only bright spot in this episode is her husband is a police officer so she had some information more readily available to her. Indeed her identity was stolen and within the same day, some fraudulent charges were made on her credit card. Here are the four 'must do' steps to take. Keep a detailed record of all your conversations and copies of all the correspondences and forms.

1. Contact the toll-free fraud number of any one of the three consumer reporting companies to place a fraud alert on your credit report. You only need to contact one of the three companies to place an alert. The company you call is required to contact the other two, which will place an alert on their versions of your report, too. This fraud alert that you've given will notify all the creditors that you have been a victim and will not allow accounts to be opened in your name without permission from you. The permission is often done by the credit company calling you and asking if you indeed want to open an account.

Equifax: 1-800-525-6285;
Experian: 1-888-397-3742;
TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289

Make Contact the Same Day

Credit: Microsoft Clip Art

Copyright: Microsoft