The biggest rising scam and fastest growing crime in America is identity theft. It is estimated that every 4 to 5 seconds someone loses their identity. This is indeed a serious problem for those that have good credit, as there are predators looking to assume your identity so that they can get goods, services, and certain other benefits in your name.
There are many laws that allow consumers to be proactive in protecting their good name.
There are such measures that a consumer can take like placing a fraud alert on their credit profile for instance, which is a great tool. By doing this, a creditor would have to call whatever number is associated with the fraud alert to confirm your identity and that you are indeed the person applying for credit. One of the worst things that can happen to a person is for them to take the necessary measures to restore their good name or build up their credit profile, and then leave it unprotected to thieves and scam artists looking for a shortcut. I like to think of it as insurance. We protect and insure those things that have value, which more than likely it took your good credit get, so why not protect your credit.
Other things that you can do might include placing a "freeze" on your credit which can be taken on or off at your leisure, which will make it highly unlikely for someone to open new accounts in your name. This will prevent anyone from viewing your credit at any time accept those you have authorized or have permissible purpose such as your current credit card provider, your mortgage company, and the like. These are free services that are made available to you by simply making a phone call or writing to the credit bureaus.
An Inexpensive yet powerful tool to utilize would be the use of a credit monitoring service.
All three of the major credit bureaus offer these services. A monitoring service does just that, it monitors activity on your credit profile and send you automatic email alerts when something changes on it. Adverse activity such as a new collection account, a new late payment, if a creditor has pulled your credit to request for your reports, and certain changes in your account statuses, are some of the things that you will be made aware of immediately via email. This is definitely worth having because the sooner you catch any adverse activity the better.
While there are many different monitoring services out there, we like to recommend going with ones that give you either daily or at least unlimited monthly access to your credit reports at no additional charge. Again, all three of the major credit bureaus have monitoring services that you can check out. Here are five monitoring service links that you may look into.
For more information on remedying the effects of identity theft
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