What To Do First if You Suspect Identity Theft

If you suspect your identity may have been stolen, what do you do next? Who do you call or contact? There are specific steps to take if you are ever in this situation. Additionally, if you can show that you have taken these steps, that will help your case in the event that you have to prove you did not make specific charges or open certain accounts.

There are four main steps that you should take and here is the first step:

Contact any one of the three consumer reporting agencies. This will put a fraud alert on your credit report and that will tell creditors to pay special attention to any requests to open new accounts in your name.

Here is the contact information for the three companies:

• Equifax: 1-800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
• Experian: 1-888-EXPERIAN (397-3742); www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
• TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

You only have to contact one of the three listed above. The one that you contact is required to pass that information on to the other two agencies. Make sure that you receive a confirmation from the company you contact.

You are then entitled to receive free copies of your credit reports. Get them and review them carefully. If you see credit companies listed that you did not contact or unexplained debts on any of your accounts, file an appeal to get those removed.

Tomorrow, we will post about the second step to take if you suspect your identity has been stolen.

You should bookmark these pages or somehow keep them handy. I am sure that no identity theft victim ever thought that would happen to them, so be prepared.

This should be of particular concern to you if you have recently shopped at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, A.J. Wright, Winners, Home Sense or T.K. Maxx, since their database was hacked resulting in the theft of numerous credit card numbers, driver’s license number and other private information.