Identity Theft
Protecting one of your most valuable assets - your credit score
Insurance
One piece of the puzzle in protecting your identity is to have an indentity recovery option added to your homeowners/renters/condo policy. Like all insurance protection, these optional policy endorsements provide restoration services after your credit histories have already been compromised. A typical policy provides an advocate to help you stop further damage from happening, helping you correct and restore and your credit histories, cancel credit cards, and place freezes and alerts on your credit histories, compensate for legal help, along with other services. These policies do not provide money to pay back stolen money due to an identity theft.
Credit Freezes
One of the most cost effective ways to protect your credit rating from being compromised and/or stolen is to place a freeze on your histories with the three national credit bureaus. In most circumstances, this can be done online, by phone, or by mail. This helps prevent new credit lines from being open. When you want to apply for credit, you must unfreeze teh bureau that the creditor uses, and then refreeze. There is a small cost to freeze and unfreeze your histories - well worth the cost. Here is contact info:
Equifax
online: www.equifax.com (look for the "Fruad Alert & Freeze" section)
phone: 1-800-685-1111
mail: Equifax Security Services PO Box 105788 Atlanta GA 30348
Experian
online: www.experian.com/freeze
phone: not available
mail: Experian Security PO Box 8554 Allen TX 75013
TransUnion
online: www.transunion.com (look for link at bottom under the "Identity Theft" section)
phone: 1-888-909-8872
mail: TransUnion Fraud Victim Assistance PO Box 6790
Fullerton CA 92834
If you are requesting the freezes by mail, you must include your full name, current address, former address is you have resided at your currrent address for two years or less, your date of birth, your Social Security Number, and a copy of a government issued ID.
Credit Monitoring
There are many credit monitoring services available. These services typically alert you to when someone is accessing your credit history. They also help to stop junk mail from being delivered to you. Someone intercepting a mailed credit offer is a common way identity and money is stolen. Just go to your favorite search engine and type in "credit monitoring" and you will find a number of different services.
Checking your Credit Histories
It is a very good idea to check your own credit histories at least once a year to make sure the information is accurate. If you find inaccuracies, you need to contact the credit bureaus to fix the errors. You can get free copies of your three credit bureau histories annually by visiting www.AnnualCreditReport.com or calling 1-877-322-8228.
For more information access the Federal Trade Commission's
website at www.ftc.gov/idtheft
