Your identity has been stolen. What next? Here are 4 things you should do and 1 thing you shouldn’t do while you’re trying to patch together what exactly has happened and to undo the damage.
Don’t Talk About Your Loss of Identity. Of course, you can cry on your best friend’s shoulder (if she’s not a gossip), but even if you’re use to sharing all the major events in your life on Facebook or another social media – don’t. Once your identity has been stolen, you have a higher risk of online fraud according to the LifeLock (an identity protection service) staff. You are especially vulnerable for phishing scams and credit monitoring scams. Keep it to yourself or, at least, don’t make it public.
Do Put a Fraud Alert on Your Credit File. You’ll have to contact all three major credit reporting agency (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). The good part is you don’t have to do it all. One phone call to any one of the agencies is all you need. That company will contact the other two credit bureaus on your behalf.
Request your Credit Files. You are entitled to a free report when you file the fraud alert. For future reference, remember you are entitled to a free credit report from each of the major agencies once each year.
Create an Identity-Theft Report. It’s going to be easier to dispute charges and fraudulent information if you have an identity-theft report. It also enables you to extend the fraud alert on your credit to seven years instead of just 90 days. You need to submit a formal complaint to the FTC (https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/report-identity-theft). There is an online tutorial to show you how to get the identity-theft report. Once you have it, you will need to file a police report where you live. Together, they will make your path a little easier.
Get to Work. Once you get the credit report, go over it very carefully. Dispute any errors you find in your personal information and any account that was not opened by you. Write to each of the reporting agencies and detail the fraudulent entries. You will also have to call each merchant that has a fraudulent account opened in your name. Note that you may have to find fraudulent use before you can file for the identity-theft report.
Taking care of all the details to restore your identity is much harder than protecting it in the first place. Some easy protections are to use your bank and creditor’s online financial sites to reduce the paper trail. Use a strong password and change it often. Any document with pertinent – and private – information that is on paper should be shredded. If you are a business, these steps are even more important. Your business has to protect its own financial information as well as any information it has on employees or customers. A business can consider on-site shredding services that completely destroy documents at your place of business or contact local Document Destruction Phoenix company. Be wise and be careful so you don’t have to try to regain your own identity.