Keep in mind that if you are a victim of an armed robbery dial 911 immediately and report the crime. This story deals with people who have lost their information accidentally or it was taken surreptitiously. filing a police report is important, but not as important as taking some immediate steps to avoid becoming a full victim of identity theft. A thief with your drivers license and social security card may have enough information to open an instant credit account at many retailers. A trick they use is to change the address the bill is forwarded to from your address to an abandoned house or business. When they do this they can avoid detection by the victim and credit card companies for several months. Thieves dont even need your information in some cases. Thanks to the internet an enterprising thief can buy all the equipment needed to make a copy of your credit cards from online sources. When a large data breach occurs (i.e. the Target breach or the E bay breach) your information is made available for sale online and the thieves just write your information onto their copycat cards and go on a spending spree. A good financial institution will monitor your spending habits and contact you if you seem to be making large amounts of out of the ordinary purchases with your account. Unfortunately no matter how hard they try the criminal element seems to be one step ahead of their counter measures. Unfortunately once you become a victim of identity theft it takes time and effort to clear up the problem. Here are some steps you should take immediately to blunt the effect the thieves can have: 1. Contact the bank or financial institution that carries your credit card. If you have a Capital One VISA then contact Capital one and not VISA. The same goes if you have a PNC VISA debit card, contact PNC and not VISA. Your card has a phone number on the back for reporting lost or stolen cards. Its a good idea to program these numbers in your cellular phone or at least write them down in case of an emergency. 2. If you lost a debit card and/or checks, contact your bank and freeze the account. Its best to change accounts immediately to avoid problems in the future. Even if your institution tells you that you need a police report and incident number to do anything they will at least stop any checks from clearing. 3. After youve completed the first two steps you should contact the police and file your report. 4. Contact the three credit reporting bureaus Equifax: equifax/home/en_us Experian: experian/ Trans union: transunion/ Place an alert on your credit history. This will stop anyone with ill intentions from opening credit accounts in your name. The creditors will attempt to contact you before allowing any new credit accounts to be opened. Even if no accounts are opened in your name you should run a credit check on yourself approximately thirty days after the theft to make sure there are no new accounts opened. Pennsylvania allows everyone to get one free credit report per year by law. Go to the following website and apply if you havent yet: https://annualcreditreport/index.action. 5. If your social security card was stolen you can get a new one by filing an application at: socialsecurity.gov 6. Pennsylvania drivers can replace their stolen drivers license by going to any Pa. drivers license center and filling out an application or by going to: dmv.state.pa.us/replacementcenter/replacinglicense.shtml No matter how hard you try you cannot stop all identity theft but you can definitely take steps to lessen its affect on your life. 268
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 23:54:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015