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Damage Control
The Armchair Millionaire's Checklist for Recovering From Identity Theft
There's no doubt that identity theft – when someone uses your personal information such as Social Security, credit card or driver's license numbers to make purchases or open accounts – is widespread in the United States. A comprehensive study by the Federal Trade Commission found that there were nearly 10 million victims in 2002. All told, identity theft costs businesses and individuals nearly $50 billion in that one year alone.
If you think you've had your identity stolen, follow this checklist of the actions you should take now to recover your good name.
- Get organized. You're going to need to navigate a bureaucratic maze to fully recover from identity theft, so get ready by organizing all your credit- and identity-related information.
- File a police report. Include as many details as possible. Get copies of the report to send to your creditors, who may require proof of the crime.
- Put a fraud alert on your credit file. Contact the fraud department of one of the three major credit bureaus and ask that a fraud alert be placed on your credit file. This alert requests creditors to contact you before opening any new accounts or making any changes to your current accounts. As soon as the fraud alert is in place with one credit bureau, the other two will be automatically notified to place alerts on your files with them. The three bureaus are Equifax (888-766-0008), Experian (888-397-3742) and TransUnion (800-680-7289).
