I want to you today about remedying somebody stealing your identity because it could happen to you and if you're reading anything that we do here on douglins.com you know that I happens to the Dolans recently when we received a letter from our bank in the mail saying “we've changed your address from this to this, is that correct?” and of course it wasn’t correct.
So here’s what I did. This is a nice, handy dandy little clean way for you to handle it if you think somebody has gotten your identity stolen, a credit card it could be out there to steal your identity whatever.
First thing, you do contact the credit bureaus, Transunion, Equifax, Experian. You can either do it online at experian.com or by 800 numbers and what you want to do is you put in your social security number and you get them to put a credit fraud alert on your credit report. Which will in some cases depending on the credit bureau get you off of all of those bogus mailing list that send you all of these applications for things that could end up being used by someone else with your name on it. Get you off those list for six months and it will alert somebody who is going to check your credit status that there is a block on there and they’ll have to confirm with you before they go forward. So that’s number.
Now they tell you when you're calling you only have to call one, I call all three of them and in our case because there were two people I entered two social security numbers, three times for a total of six. It took a while but it’s well worth it. That’s what I did first and foremost.
Next what you want to do if you see something on your credit card bill et cetera then you pick up your credit card, turn it around get the 800 number and call the company let them know that there is a bogus charge on there and that you’ve already put an alert on your credit report.
If it’s something as dangerous as it was with us with a natural change of address contact your local post office to be sure no one has put in a card to change all of your mailing. In our case where it was just this one particular account to be honest we’d forgotten we have, so therefore you have line of credit at banks that you’ve never used, don’t intend to use close them out, don’t leave them open there. They like to encourage you in hopes that maybe you'll get stupid one day and walk in and say “would you give me $2,000.00 out of this account” just close them.
So be sure that you do that and check with the credit bureaus. In our case where there was an actual address of a new place I contacted the police and filed a police report. If it’s something really egregious where there are big problems happening and you're not just the suspicion that somebody might be trying to use your identity. By all means contact the police file a report. They’ll tell you it isn’t that all important but going forward if some creditors tries to come after you you’ve got to proof that you were joining on the spot when the information was made aware to you. So you file that police report, keep it.
Keep detail notes of every thing that you do. And also contact the federal trade commission. You can do it by either calling 1877 ID theft on online at ftc.gov. They’ve got a whole laundry list of things to do. They will walk you through the process. I told you about contacting your local post office and document everything and don’t lose that. And might I also add that you give a three month gratis credit alert on your credit report. You may want to keep note of the dates so that when the three months are up you just continue to add that onto there so that you'll always have some degree of protection. It’s not full proof but it certainly is helpful to you.
One other thing and this I get from a dear friend of ours by the name John Cordell who is a business writer for the New York Post. It made my hair curl it will do the same to you. You get those little pre approved credit applications in the mail and you don’t want it. Well hopefully nobody just throws a wholesaling to the trash anymore. You do this right? Makes a few pieces, you figure I'm safe throw it in the garbage.
John Cordell the business writer at the Post ripped up an application from American Express then took and taped it all back together, fill it in, mailed it into American Express and they sent him a card. So he called them up and informed them what they had done. This is how badly they want your credit business. They’ll take ripped up piece of paper, filled out with your name and address on it and send you card. He did it the second time a year later when he did get another pre-approved application from American Express, ripped it up taped it back up and changed the mailing address on it. He got a post office box and he went to that post office box and you guess it American Express was in that box.
So get a shredder, a cross cut shredder so this cannot be done to you. Good luck.
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